


bound, at the end of the world

by bereft_of_frogs



Series: the nine in the tree [4]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Infinity Gems, Infinity War AU, Not (quite) a Fix-It, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Sokovia Accords, The Raft Prison (Marvel), Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2019-10-18 00:30:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 55,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17570834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bereft_of_frogs/pseuds/bereft_of_frogs
Summary: Sequel to 'pain and other human sensations.'Thor and Loki have escaped Sanctuary...only to find themselves locked away on the Raft. Thanos remains a looming threat, but Earth's authorities refuse to heed warnings.Time is growing short to stop the Mad Titan's path of destruction. Thor must keep himself and his brother safe, and get them out before they can move against him. And that involves navigating a world he no longer recognizes, and friendships he can no longer rely on.The Avengers are broken and Earth's defenses have shattered in the wake of the explosion.AnInfinity WarAU in three parts.





	1. Part I: Locked Up; Or: The Monster in the Basement (1/3)

**Author's Note:**

> ...you didn't think I would just leave Thor and Loki like _that_ , did you? 
> 
> If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you'll want to back up and start with 'pain and other human sensations', the Whumptober prompt fills that got away from me. See Chapter 33 for a guide to the abridged storyline, or dive right in and read the whole non-linear narrative as originally intended. (No hard feelings if you prefer the abridged.) 
> 
> This story will be told in three parts, updated at a much more relaxed pace than 'pain and other human sensations'. The first part consists of three chapters that will be updated weekly, then there might be longer breaks between the parts. I post 'pain and other human sensations' at such a frenetic pace, and I doubt I'll ever have the energy to do daily updates again. 
> 
> Big BIG thank you to everyone who commented on 'pain and other human sensations'! It made it so much easier to work on when I was feeling uninspired or burnt out or self-conscious. I hope this series lives up to expectations. Thank you for sticking with me!
> 
> Without further ado, here's 'Part I: Locked Up; Or: The Monster in the Basement (Chapter 1 of 3)' 
> 
> Warnings: pretty severe dehumanization, depictions of violence, threat of execution

“Order is important, stability is important. With the Avengers, we had an internal order, but nothing to direct our energies properly. Asgard long brought order to the Nine Realms, protecting them from chaos. I have seen the chaos and suffering that disorder brings, and I support the Sokovia Accords wholeheartedly.”    

“What of the argument that some of the restrictions listed in the Accords are draconian, constituting cruel and unusual punishment for abilities that enhanced individuals cannot control-”    

“If enhanced individuals cannot control their powers, then keeping them in a supervised, enclosed environment is not only the best thing for the general public, but for their own safety as well,” Ross interrupts before Thor could dwell on the question for too long. He falls silent, letting Tony take the next question, Ross the one after that. If the reporters at the press conference notice how quiet and sullen he seems, they do not call him out. It has been this way at others, no one ever comments.

“Have you had any leads as to the location of Captain-”    

“If there are no more questions about the incident that occurred today in Central Park, or about how the new Avengers are being equipped to deal with these incidents, I think we can call it a day,” Ross says, rising from the table. “I for one have a very important dinner reservation and I might need to call out the Avengers to save me from my wife if I am late.” Titters rise from the gathered reports. “Thank you very much everyone, have a good night.” They leave the shimmering glass of the tower lobby behind, and go to a conference room. The jovial, relaxed performance dissipates. “Jesus Christ, Thor, you can’t even try to act like you’re not miserable.”    

“That was not part of the deal. I come out, I defeat whatever enemy you point me at, I speak in favor of the Accords. I do not know what else you want from me.”    

“I want you to at least _pretend_ you’re not being dragged here kicking and screaming.”    

“I am being dragged here.”    

“Yes, that’s why I said _pretend_.” Ross sighs. “Look, it’s fine for now because no one has noticed, or at least no one’s commented. But if they start, you’re going to have to put in more effort.”    

“Do tell me when they start and I’ll give it my best performance.” Thor turns his back then, crossing his arms over his chest and staring out the window at nothing.

“Fine. Your ride will be here in twenty minutes. They’ll escort you to the roof when its time to go home. Now I wasn’t kidding about my wife, she’ll kill me if I’m late again. I’ll see you later, Stark.” The room is left, very, very quiet, made more so by the silent fury streaming off of Thor.    

“Are you going to talk to me this time?” Tony says quietly when he cannot take it any longer.    

“No.”    

“Look, Thor, I’m sorry-”    

“You keep apologizing as though it is going to change anything.”    

“I did what I had to do, to protect us, to protect Earth.”    

“And I’ve said, a thousand times, you’re not _paying attention_. We are not the threat to the universe, it is Thanos-”    

“We know. But there's no sign of him. And the danger is coming from us, from what we can do if we’re not careful. I spent most of my career destroying things, it’s finally time to be held accountable.”

Thor snorts. “Ah, so what you’re doing to us is accountability. I see. I have nothing more to say to you, Stark, so just leave me.”    

“Okay. But I’m going to keep trying, big guy. I’m not going to give up on you.” Thor says nothing else. The door opens and closes and he is alone.

He does not move, looking out the window and thinking of nothing, until the guards knock.    

“The plane is ready.” They escort him to the roof, where they board a sleek black jet. John, the supervising guard in charge of his imprisonment, is there waiting.    

“It’s time.” Thor holds out his wrists and lets himself be handcuffed, then sits on the bench. “How’d it go?”    

“Oh, you know,” He sighs. “Just a extra-dimensional sludge monster in the middle of New York. Then more reporters. The usual.”    

“Ross said you behaved. So we’ll keep our promise.” Thor just nods.    

The ride to the Raft is a quiet affair. When they finally disembark onto the prison, John asks him, “Do you want dinner, or to go down first?”    

“Down.”

John hesitates, but calls the elevator. “I don’t know why you do this to yourself,” His guard says quietly as the descend. “I don’t know…if I could see someone I cared about like this.” Thor says nothing. He doesn’t know either. It’s hard, and every time they let him do this he returns to his cell swearing it’s going to be the last time. But every time they give him a new mission he inevitably says, “let me see him after.” The higher-ups put up with it; it’s an added insurance that Thor will return to the prison promptly and without struggle each time they let him out.    

They reach the bottom floor, deep under the waves, and the alarm blares. There’s a curious, hesitant brush of Thor’s mind with magic. He struggles to keep his face neutral as his heart pounds with an odd mixture of fear and relief. John removes the cuffs and leads him to his brother’s cell, pressing his hand to the locking mechanism to let him in.    

“Ten minutes,” He says. “Then it’s lights out.” The door slides shut behind him and the brothers are alone.    

Loki’s head is down as he kneels, half suspended by the chains that secure him to the walls. Thor kneels before him and touches his neck. It’s awkward, trying to fit his hand in its familiar place around both the collar and the muzzle. Loki leans into the touch, quietly desperate for any contact.    

“I’m back,” He says quietly. “Wasn’t too long this time.” Loki meets his eyes, his own wide and watery and shakes his head. “Someone called forward a sludge monster. Disgusting. Was easy enough to defeat.” He presses their foreheads together. Loki uses the contact to renew the connection between their magics, the only thing he could get around the bindings in the collar. Thor strokes his hair slowly, letting their magics mingle. The connection between them is unspoken because it doesn’t have to really be spoken anymore. Emotions, impressions, pass between them, Thor focusing on soothing.    

Loki shivers, pressing closer. Thor embraces him around the chains, holding him with his nose buried in Loki’s hair as long as they will allow. Time is up, too fast.

“Okay, that’s it.”

Thor feels a spike of anxiety from Loki. “It’s alright, brother,” He whispers, squeezing him tight for a moment. “It’s alright.”    

“Let’s go. Time for lights out.” The anxiety peaks into panic. Loki’s eyes grow wide and fearful and he whimpers, shaking his head. Thor forces himself to let him go. Loki strains for him, pulling against the chains. He just keeps shaking his head.

Thor can feel his heart racing. “It’s okay,” He says, pushing love and reassurance through their magic. “It’s okay.” They handcuff him and pull him away. John tries to hurry him along, but they don’t quite make it into the elevator before Loki’s guards cut the lights and the first panicked, muffled screams start.    

“Shit, those assholes,” John mutters. “They always do that.” It wouldn’t have mattered, if they’d made it to the elevator before Loki was left wailing in the dark. Thor feels it in his bones, every single night.    

“How long do you really think this can go on?” Thor says, a flash of anger burning through him. His voice is low, dangerous, and he has no doubt he’s being recorded in the elevator. But he can’t take it any more. John’s thin veneer of sympathy, the indignity of being bound and manipulated like this, in that moment all becomes too much. “How long do you really think you can hold us?” John says nothing. Thor spends the rest of the elevator ride back to the regular cells seething in fury, fantasizing about spattering blood and brains over the walls of this prison. He had not been one to indulge in such violent dreams, that was always the province of Loki’s imagination, but this _caging_ is the final straw it seems.    

He is returned to the small cell. A bed, a sink. The walls and ceiling and floor all painted the same dull grey, the fourth wall clear plexiglass through which he can see other, empty cells. He is utterly alone. He has been since he arrived, only ever seeing guards in the halls. He can hear things from above sometimes, loud crashes, possible inhuman screams, but he doesn’t dare ask. The months have passed, slowly, with a mind-numbing daily routine and occasional ventures out into the real world to fight off various Earthly threats.    

There is no sign of Thanos. No one will believe his warnings.    

When he dwells too long on the Titan, out there in the stars somewhere, he finds himself breaking into a cold sweat. So he pushes it aside, doesn’t think about it. He can do nothing about it, after all, not in here, so it’s no use to dwell.    

He definitely, _definitely_ doesn’t think of Heimdall, or the Valkyrie, or the remnant of his people. He simply cannot.    

Across the tiny floor, Thor paces, working off the anger building since the press conference. He manages to compose himself enough to clear his mind, and allow Loki’s magic to draw them together. He feels, foremost, Loki’s fear of being blind and bound in the dark, and his own heartbeat increases in kind. Through the fog of panic, he pushes comfort and reassurance. He closes his eyes and tries to focus on a memory of their shared childhood. There’s a lullaby their mother used to sing to him that he’s forgotten half the words to, but he can remember the melody, the softness of the blankets under his cheek, and the warmth of the fire. It’s enough, with the magic and Loki’s own memories, to work without most of the lyrics. Loki’s panic settles after a while.    

Thor lays on his back in the cell and hums the old lullaby to himself as he falls asleep.  
   

Lightyears away, a woman drains the rest of a bottle of alcohol that burns her throat as it goes down. She tosses the bottle aside and cracks the next open.

“Brunnhilde.” She grunts in response. “You must stop doing this to yourself.”

She laughs. “Why should I? What else do I have left, Watcher?” The Valkyrie staggers to her feet, stumbling back. “I could just stay kneeling here, reciting the mourning prayer over and over and over again but I’ll never run out of people to mourn so why bother?” She kicks the empty bottle and feels a perverse satisfaction as it shatters against the wall.    

“I watched the princes grow, I watched them from their first steps,” Heimdall says. “I know your pain.”   

“Do you? Because I’ve endured this pain twice.” She laughs and it is bitter and jagged. “Lo, there I do see my sisters. Lo, there I do see my brothers.” Her breath hitches. “I’ve lost everything twice.”    

“And lo, there I see my people, back to the beginning,” Heimdall continues. “There is still them.”    

“Half an already decimated population, children and farmers and old women, the royal line obliterated. Our last mage, the last carrier of Asgard’s magic,” Her voice cracks. “Gone.”    

“It’s not nothing. And Bruce is still alive.”   

“You presume. You sent him to Earth, where Thanos could have picked him up, slaughtered him like he did…like he did…” Her voice breaks and she wavers on her feet. “Norns.”    

Heimdall is patient. He sits with her as she drinks the rest of the bottle, as she begins to weep, watching her as she passes out on the floor.    

In the morning, she gets up, vomits up the residual alcohol and stumbles back to her cold and silent room. In a few hours, she’ll get up and do the work of governing foisted on her by the deaths of the last authority figures Asgard had known. If she closes her eyes, head still spinning with the drink, she almost can hear the soft noises of Bruce snoring beside her, of Thor and Loki whispering to each other in the dark as they sometimes did.    

Ghosts, all of them. Haunting her. The Valkyrie Queen of Asgard. The Valkyrie Queen of the Dead.    

It’s time to rule.  
   

There’s a group of old men in the corner, playing dominoes. Natasha keeps one eye on them, the other on the TV screen. Steve is entirely focused on the screen. 

 _“…’I have seen the chaos that disorder brings, and I support the Accords wholeheartedly.’ Secretary Ross had no comment on the whereabouts of fugitive Steve Rogers, who has not been seen or heard from since the conflict that erupted between he and Iron Man in Germany last May…”_    

“I’ve seen enough,” Steve says and nods at the bartender. He switches it to a football game, the commentators speaking in rapid-fire Spanish. The old men are much more interested in the game than they had been in the news, and start chattering in Catalan.    

“What do you think? You still think he’s faking it.”    

“There’s no way Thor would give in to the Accords that easily. ‘The chaos that disorder brings,’ does that sound like him?”    

“Steve, do you really believe that he wouldn’t take Tony’s side…or do you _want_ to believe it?”    

“Come on, Nat, it doesn’t make any sense.”    

“None of us really knew Thor that well.”    

“I did.”    

“You thought you did. Thor is like 1500 years old, he was the crown prince of a realm that considered its kings on the level of gods. It would make sense that he would be pro-organized authority.”    

“But why would he surrender that authority to a bunch of mortals? Like you said, they think their kings are gods, why would he surrender that to Ross?” Steve runs a hand through his hair. “Something just feels wrong about this, Nat.”

She sighs. “I know. What do you want us to do?”    

“Can you get us tapped back into their communications?”    

“I can. It will be easier the closer we are to Rota. Seville should be close enough.” Nat leans back against the bar and drains the rest of her beer. “There’s a bus that leaves at 6:30 tomorrow morning that will get us there in seven hours.”

Steve smiles. “And how did you already know that?”    

“We’ve been on the run for a while now, Rogers, I know how you think.” She sighs. “I want you to be prepared for if Thor’s being genuine, if he truly signed the Accords. I don’t want you to feel betrayed.”    

“I know. I don’t need you to protect me.”    

“I know.” Natasha shrugs. “I want to.”    

“Wanda and Sam-”    

“Due back at midnight.”    

“We have some time, if you want to…”

Natasha grins. “Sounds like a plan.”    

They slip to a quiet warehouse on the edge of the city to spar until they’re both exhausted and bruised. Afterwards, Steve feels just a little better. Natasha seems unaffected.    

“You’re sure about this?” She asks, sipping a bottle of water. “You’re sure you want to wade back in, for Thor?”

Steve sighs and looks out at the city. 

“I can’t do anything else.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter to get us started. (Don't worry, the next are longer.) 
> 
> Thanks for reading! See you next Sunday night. <3 
> 
> Find me on tumblr at bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	2. Part I: Locked Up; Or: The Monster in the Basement (2/3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their imprisonment on the Raft continues. Steve tries to get to the bottom of Thor's motivations, and Bruce Banner is very confused. Tony stumbles around, trying to do the right thing, and Thor remains Yggdrasil's worst seer. 
> 
> Warnings: this chapter contains the continued threat of execution, including a description of lethal injection protocols. (But there is no character death!) (Spoilers, but if you would prefer to skip that part, jump from when Ross enters Thor's prison cell to the second to last paragraph before the break, after Thor's nightmare.)

“Boss, call for you,” FRIDAY says in his ear. “It’s Dr. Banner.”  

“Oh no,” Tony says. Out loud, it turns out.    

“I heard that.” The call has already connected, and Bruce’s grumpy face fills the screen. At least he doesn’t look as furious as he had the first time he called, right after the first time Thor had been featured in one of Ross’s little press conferences.   

Tony has seen Bruce angry and he had seen him _Angry_. He had never seen him as furious as that first video call.   

“How long have you known?” Bruce had asked him the moment the call connected. “How long has he been here? Jesus, Tony, what the _hell?_ ”    

“A few weeks,” Tony admitted, too tired and guilty and burnt out to think about hiding the truth. “Crash landed here. Loki was spinning some story-”   

“Spinning some… _Jesus_. Was it Thanos? Thanos had them, didn’t he? Wait, you said Loki, Loki was with him, he was okay? How did they escape?”

“I don’t know, something about a nebula.”

“A nebula?? _What?_ ” Bruce ran his fingers through his hair. “Tony, I cannot believe you’ve known they were on Earth, for weeks and you didn’t call me. Jesus. Put Thor on the phone.”

Tony winced. “I can’t.”   

“I can wait.”    

“No, Bruce, he’s not here.”   

“Where is he then? Tony? Tony.”    

“They’re on the Raft.” There was a moment of silence.

Bruce’s brow furrowed. “The Raft, what the hell is the Raft?”   

“It’s…it’s a facility, for…people like…”   

“A facility?”    

“It’s a prison, okay?” Tony broke. He paced before the screen as he confessed. “It’s a prison, designed to hold…they started calling them Enhanced Individuals since the Accords. There’s lots of legal stuff to work out. But it’s secure, and safe, and even though Ross says-”    

“Wait. Ross. The Secretary of State?”    

“Yes.” Tony thought Bruce was really going to explode then. Code Green and everything. But though Tony thought he could see a hint of color in his neck, Bruce just gritted his jaw.    

And hung up.    

Now, when Bruce calls him, Tony doesn’t recognize the background. It’s a lot of wood paneling, weird esoteric art and artifacts on counters and bookshelves. Tony knows better than to ask where he is, just as he knows better than to use the phone tucked in his desk, or think too hard about where Vision goes when he disappears for days at a time.    

“Bruce, hey, buddy, how’s it going?” There is a long pause on the other end; Bruce letting the awkwardness dangle.    

“I’m still really, _really_ angry,” Bruce starts. “But I need to know what happened. What they told you.” Tony tells him as much as he recalls. The details of Loki’s story are a little fuzzy, Tony hadn’t paid that much attention. When he finishes, Bruce just looks sad. “They’re locked up for their own protection as much as-”   

“That’s not the important part. What are you doing about Thanos?”   

“What _is_ there to do about Thanos? We’ve got a mysterious evil purple alien who’s going to what, wipe out life in the universe? No one wants to hear about that, when we’ve got issues _here_ , on Earth. Thanos is freakin’ _lightyears_ away.”   

“He may be now, but Thanos will come for the stones. Look, Tony, for now just…just be careful, especially with Vision. And keep an eye out for anything weird.”

“Newsflash, Banner, things have gotten a whole lot weirder since you’ve been gone.” Tony is the one that’s angry now, angry at Bruce’s (or the Hulk’s) abandonment of them all after Sokovia. The way he seemed to have bonded with Thor and _Loki_ , of all people, had this life and adventure, while he and Steve were down here on Earth, struggling to sort out the mess made by the Avengers.    

Tony’s the one to hang up this time.  
   

Over their months of imprisonment, Thor dreamt of Loki’s execution often. At first, it had been in the traditional ways of Asgard. Loki meeting his fate at the edge of the axe in front of the entire court, his head rolling across the colorfully tiled floors.    

But then they explain to him what it looks like on Earth.    

It was once when he was being particularly recalcitrant, refusing to go along with their plans to have him at a press conference for the anniversary of the Accords signing.    

“I will do whatever you want of me, kill whatever monster or petty tyrant you desire, but I will not be this puppet anymore.”    

“Is that what you really want?” John asked. “Really?”    

“Yes.”    

“I think the Secretary might be able to convince you otherwise.” Ross came, furious at being dragged onto the Raft in the middle of his ‘golf game’. (Thor doesn’t really know what ‘golf’ is and he was not particularly inclined to ask.)    

He brought with him a silver case. “I thought you might want to hear a little bit about what will happen if you really don’t want to do your duties anymore.”   

“These are _not_ my duties-” Ross opened the case to reveal two needles and three bags of clear liquid. “What are those?”    

“This is how we execute people on Earth,” Ross said. “At least in the good ole’ US. ’Lethal injection,’ we call it. Sounds nice, right? Here’s how it goes: Loki will be strapped on his back to a gurney. Alone. The first drug, pentobarbital B, will knock him out. Sedative. The second paralyzes the breathing muscles, so he’ll suffocate.” The image of Loki kicking his legs in empty air, laying in his arms and struggling to draw breath through a crushed windpipe, came unbidden to Thor’s mind. He stays very still, expression carefully schooled. “The last one, potassium chloride, stops his heart. He will die alone. He will die scared and unsure of what is happening to him. Now, we aren’t monsters. We knock them out with the pentobarbital so the prisoners are not in pain. But,” Ross shrugged. “We’ve never tried to execute a god before. And perhaps it doesn’t work the way its intended. Perhaps we miscalculate the dose. Who knows? I’ve heard the chloride is very painful, without the pentobarbital. Like fire in the vein.” He closed the case. “Even if it all goes well, he dies alone and frightened. You’ll be locked in this prison for the rest of your natural life. Now. Are you ready for the press conference?”

Thor’s mouth was very dry. “What do you want me to say?”    

“Good.”    

A week later, in a fit of particular sadism, one of the guards shows him a video of some convicted murderer, his life ended by the needle. When the video cuts off and he’s alone, Thor is sick, retching violently into the toilet. Loki’s mind in his is confused at his sudden panicked sickness, and he passes reassurance through the magic. _I’m fine_ , He thinks, pushing it through the connection. _It’s nothing, I’m fine_.    

After that, he dreams no more of the axe. He dreams only of the needles. After a while, he can’t even picture Loki outside of the thin blue clothes, issued by the prison.

One night, he has a particularly vivid nightmare.    

It’s simple enough, but it feels so real. He just stands and watches, behind a sheet of glass as they bring Loki, still bound and gagged, into the sterile room. They unbind him, remove the gag, and emotionlessly direct him to lie down on the cot. They strap him down, his arms extended to the sides. They insert the needles and Loki turns his head towards him.    

“Do you have any last words?” Ross asks. Loki shakes his head. He has no parting words of comfort for his brother. The drugs begin to flow and Loki slowly drops off to sleep, blinking rapidly. But there would be no waking up from this.    

The second drug drips down the tube.    

Loki suddenly arches on the bed, gasping for air past a ruined throat, body beginning to seize on the stretcher, thrashing against his bonds as he lets out an unmistakable cry of agony-   

Thor wakes with a gasp and a thundering heart back in his cell. He surges to his feet, stumbling away from the bed.    

“ _Norns_ ,” He gasps, putting his face in his hands. His heart is beating fast, nausea rising in his throat. He’s pacing before he even realizes in, full of panicked energy.

He’s woken Loki. He feels it through the bond. Loki’s curiosity, his concern. He can’t reassure him. He can’t even reassure himself.    

He drops to his knees, gripping the edge of his bed.    

“I can’t do this,” He gasps into the darkness. “I can’t do this anymore.” A wretched sob threatens to tear itself out of his throat. He swallows past the lump. “ _Norns_ , I can’t do this anymore.”    

The nightmare keeps its claws in his psyche long after waking. He cannot forget the mental image, nor the all-too-familiar feeling of feeling Loki’s life slipping through his fingers. He can’t shake it, or Loki’s faint concern through their magic, throughout the day and he dreads what nightmares wait for him the next night.

Thor is woken in the middle of the night by the lights coming on and the Raft’s general keying in the unlocking code. “We’ve got a job for you.”

Thor recalls the nightmare and his heart sinks. _Was it just a nightmare?_ He wonders. _Or was it_ … He curses himself for lacking the discipline to learn when he was seeing the future and when he was not. It was a constant irritation to Loki, whose skill with seidr did give him the ability to tell the difference, though not the ability to naturally see the future without spells and scrying devices. He cannot ask Loki now to help him, so he leaves their prison, without knowing for sure whether his nightmare was nothing but the product of his imagination, or a sign of coming doom.   

Dread settles in his chest like an old friend.  
   

When they arrive in Rota, Natasha works her version of magic and then they’re in, communications and files routed directly into their cobbled together electronics array Sam calls Victor. (Sam will not hear arguments that it was the scientist that was named ‘Victor’.) They only skim what they need, avoiding the most sensitive stuff to prevent detection. And because from a distance, they can’t go very deep.    

“If we want the good stuff, I’ll have to break in,” Natasha tells them. “But…”   

“That’s a big risk,” Steve admits, looking over her shoulder at the screen. 

“On the bright side, the communications hack is _finally_ stable. So, if you want to read Ross’s emails…” Natasha grins.   

“Oh, I very, very much want to do that.”   

“Please read them out loud,” Sam calls from the kitchen, where he and Wanda are on dinner duty. “Please, _please_ , read them out loud.”    

A few days of monitoring, they settle into a holding pattern. After eight days, the debate over whether or not this is worth it after all starts up. They’re all beginning to feel a bit cooped up in the tiny Spanish apartment.    

“The longer we stay, the more time they have to find us,” Sam says. “I think we need a new approach. This isn’t working.”    

“But wouldn’t moving mean we’ll have to start over? We would lose the work we have already done, right?” Wanda asks.    

“Yes, on the communications at least. But they’re not giving us anything. It might be better to regroup, try and come up with another way in. Steve? What do you think?” He sighs. He knows they can’t stay like this forever. They can’t just keep sitting in this tiny Spanish apartment and flagging any government communications that could possibly be about Thor. Communications that all turn out to be nothing.    

“Three more days,” He says. “Then we get in the quinjet and we go. We’ll figure something else out.”   

“Got it. Sam, can you monitor the radio for a bit? I’ll start finding a new place.” Sam agrees to take up listening to the radio and skimming the emails that come in, Wanda goes to make dinner, and Natasha settles on the couch with a laptop.    

“Where you thinking?” Steve asks her after about half an hour of listening to her rapid clicking of the keys.   

“I’m still concerned about the Americas. North America is clearly out, obviously, and the CIA has too many eyes in South America. I don’t think going back to Wakanda is really necessary this time, and it will make monitoring harder with all their tech blocks.”   

“I wouldn’t want to risk T’Challa’s position without reason either.”   

“At least you’re being sensible about that,” Natasha grins. “Even if it’s maybe not T’Challa you’re worried about. Asia’s too far from the action for us to make a move if we need to. I was thinking Eastern Europe? One of the Baltics? It’s nice in the Fall.”    

“I think Sam will miss the heat.”    

“We’ve been in warm countries for six months. Greece, then Croatia, then that month in Sardinia, now Spain…”   

“Yeah, how tragic, we’ve been living in some of the warmest, sunniest places you can think of.”   

“Hey, I’m Russian, if I’m too hot for too long I’ll start to melt.” She glances towards the kitchen. “Don’t worry, we’ll give Sokovia a wide berth.”    

The days pass, and even though they had given themselves three more days before moving on, the frenetic energy of moving and packing has started to infect their small living space.   

But then finally, payoff.   

“Steve,” Natasha wakes him in the middle of the night. “I’ve got something.” She plays him a saved audio file, tinny, panicked voices and a calmer voice confirming the orders. “Wanda caught it. I’ve got the live feed now. They’re definitely talking about Thor intervening.” They listen to the voices over the radio. “Come on, come on, we need a location. Coordinates, something.” Then she smiles. “Got it.”

Steve jots down the location. “I’ll go. Alone.”   

“Alone? Are you sure?”    

“Traveling alone will attract less attention. You three stay here, keep monitoring the communications. Be ready to move though. If I’m caught, or if Thor wants to come back with me, we’ll have to run, fast.”    

“Be careful.”   

“I know what I’m doing. Whatever…creature they were freaking out about, I think I can take it.”    

“That’s not what I meant. You know that’s not what I meant.”   

“You’re still doubting Thor’s motives?” Steve chuckles, without humor. “Well. I guess we’ll finally find out.”   

“If he…” Natasha takes a deep breath. “Just be careful, Steve.”    

“I know. Thanks, Nat.”    

“And keep your transmitter on!”    

Steve takes off into the night. By dawn he’s deep into the woods, picking up the quinjet from where they’ve stashed it and flying into the gathering light.  
       

The job Thor was dispatched to do turns out to be a small cult, a minor HYDRA offshoot. They’ve been holding a cache of HYDRA technology and been trying to modify the tech into proper weapons. One of their new gadgets apparently conjured horrifying beasts through a wormhole to terrify the nearby military base. From the video they show him, Thor believes he recognizes the creatures.    

“They are dangerous, but mindless,” He says. “It will not be difficult. There is no need to disturb Stark. I can handle this one on my own.” And have peace besides. These monsters don’t last long in the Midgardian climate, perishing quickly in the unfamiliar atmosphere, but the military wanted the creatures gone as quickly as possible, and the cult in custody.    

“Okay, the general says it’s okay for you to go it alone. We’ll be stationed at the base as backup and to take in the criminals. Just as long as you remember what’s at stake.” He glares at the soldier’s back, and says nothing.     

Thor makes quick work of the cult itself. He binds them and leaves them stashed in their hideout to deal with the creature they summoned. The beast flaps its wings with an earth-shaking roar. Thor smiles and hefts his borrowed sword.   

“I guess I have to take of you too.”    

This winged monster reminds him of a creature he had fought, many centuries ago. Then, he had not been alone. He had been barely a man, on an expedition to Alfheim with the Warrior’s Three. The fight had been fun back then. Thor had been young and horrendously arrogant, his friends the same. None of them could have ever imagined what was to befall them.    

Battling the creature know, he feels as if he closed his eyes he could hear his friends around him still.    

_“On the flank, Thor,” Fandral calls. “A weak spot in the armor.”_

_“I’m on it!” Sif shouts as she charges past him, always eager to prove herself._    

Thor doesn’t quite admit it to himself, but he draws out the fight with the wyvern. He selfishly wants more time in the sunshine, in the clean air, just as he sometimes did aboard the Ark. He wants to pretend just for a little bit that he was a young warrior traveling the Nine with his comrades. A prince of a powerful realm, deserving of respect and admiration. If he loses himself in the fight, he can almost conjure the ghosts of the past.    

He falls backs, allowing the wyvern to recover. It roars and he smiles.    

“You are truly a worthy opponent,” He calls. “But you must not be allowed to terrorize this planet any longer.” He swings the sword and springs forward.   

The wyvern manages to catch his side with a talon, leaving a shallow slash. That first time, he had also taken a couple minor injuries in the battle. Volstagg had said they were marks of a battle well fought, that the scars would mark him as a seasoned, respected warrior. He had almost been disappointed when they hadn’t scarred. This one wouldn’t scar either, the shallow wound already stitching itself together.    

“Is that all?” He cries. “All you’ve got?” The wyvern roars.    

Loki had been too young at the time to come adventuring with the Warrior’s Three. Their parents had forbade it. He had waited back on Asgard, and acted aloof when they returned, like he’d barely noticed. He brushed off Thor’s enthusiastic greeting, but later that night Loki had slipped quietly into Thor’s room, sat on his bed and demanded to hear the tale of their defeat of the beast. Thor perhaps exaggerated his own heroics in the retelling, but Loki had not challenged him, merely soaked in the story, awed and honest under the cover of darkness.   

“You’ll be just another good story,” Thor says as he bats the creature’s talon away. “I’ve got many.”    

Through the adrenaline of the fight, the grim reality of his present bleeds back in. The fight looses its shine. There would be no feasting, only the tasteless food on the Raft. There would be no performance of his feats of bravery, just _maybe_ a single embrace and the faint connection of their minds by means of magic. His friends are dead, his world is gone, and he doesn’t see the point anymore.    

The creature is wearying. The atmosphere takes its toll and the will to fight is leaving it. Thor ends things quickly with a gush of blood across the ground. Then he sighs and sheaths his sword. Time to drag the prisoners to his masters, and return to his cell. Nowhere else to go, nothing else to do without risking his brother’s life. He is unbound, but chained nonetheless.    

“Nicely done,” Says a voice from the tree-line.

Despite himself, Thor smiles as he turns. “Could have ended it quicker, thought I’d give the beast a fighting chance,” He says with false ease. Steve Rogers stays close to the cover of the trees. “I see you copied my beard.”    

“Nice hair.” Thor runs a hand through the still-short hair, courtesy of Sakaar. “And your eye-”   

“It’s a long story. I’ve been up to quite a bit since we last spoke. As have you, it seems.”

Steve winces. “How much have you heard?”   

“I’ve had to piece things together, little bits of the story from a variety of sources. None of it makes much sense, if I’m honest. Were you ever contacted by a lawyer? Astrid Iverson?”    

“That was you? Damn, I should have known. Yeah, I heard from her. Thought it was suspicious, never returned the message. But Norway…I should have guessed.” 

“You know they didn’t sign.”

Steve shrugs. “Some didn’t sign, but they still want the same things that Ross does.” Thor barely manages to suppress a flinch at the name. The way the name itself carries it’s own horror reminds him of the way that Loki would react to hearing Thanos’ name. An unwelcome comparison. “They want to use us for their own agendas. I couldn’t be sure they didn’t just want us to be their mercenaries.”    

“I see,” Thor says. “Never mind then. What are you doing here?”    

“Wanted to catch up with an old friend. Is that so wrong?”   

“It is difficult to believe, considering half of the world is looking to lock you up.”    

“I could try to explain my side of things to you. Over drinks, there’s a bar not far-”   

“No,” Thor says, too quickly. “No. I cannot. I’m sorry. You should not have come.” In the back of his mind, the nightmare resurfaces. The needles, that horrible gasping. Has he already said too much? Have they seen him speaking to Steve and followed through on their constant threat? A cold sweat breaks out over his skin and he needs to return now. “Do not try to find me.” He turns to go, makes it ten paces before something stops him. The association of his reaction to speaking Ross’s name and Loki’s fear of Thanos’s has reminded him of the greater problem. The specter of Ross haunts him still, but the larger one looms in his shadow. He stops in his tracks. “Steve. Just…something is coming. You will have to be ready. Someone seeking the Stones, the ones I went looking for. Remember?” Steve’s brow furrows. “That’s all I can say now. I must return, quickly, I’ve delayed too long. But you need to be prepared for what’s ahead. Earth’s defenses…they will not hold against this monster.”

“Thor, wait-”

But Thor has already turned his back and is moving quickly through the trees, to return to his prison.  
   

“Mr. Stark wants to speak to you,” the helicopter pilot says when they near the city.

Thor’s pulse races forward. “Oh?”    

“He’ll be waiting on the second floor.” Thor would normally have ignored a summons from Tony; he had done so half a dozen times before. But the anxiety peaks, the suspicion that he had been seen talking to Steve. _What if he’s already dead?_ He thinks as he carefully schools his expression. _No. You would feel it, you would know_. For all his failings as a seer, he cannot imagine missing _that_.    

The helicopter lands at the Avengers facility and several armed agents see the faux-HYDRA prisoners off to be interrogated. Thor finds Tony in one of the labs, reviewing equipment designs.   

“You didn’t ask me to come? I’m hurt, big guy.” Tony sounds awkward, uncertain.    

“It was nothing, just a wyvern and a few fools who thought they could use technology that was far beyond their capabilities. Toying with things bigger than them.”

Tony grimaces and dismisses the screen. “New nano tech designs. I’m trying to speed up the…suit formation…for obvious reasons. I doubt I can make it faster than lightning I guess but-”   

“What do you want, Stark?”    

“Took a while. For just a few fools and a dragon.”   

“A wyvern.” Thor tenses, keeping his voice cautious. Stark’s initial awkwardness had relaxed his guard, but now his anxiety returns. “Yes. I just…”   

“No, I get it. Need to stretch the legs a bit. I get it, man.” He fiddles with a pen. “I want to help you.”    

“Help me. Really. Stark, you cannot help me, unless you are willing to-”    

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m just…”   

“I cannot listen to another one of your guilt trips,” Thor snaps. “And I do not wish to have this conversation again. I will support the Accords in public, as you wish, but I will not…enable this foolishness.”    

“I’m trying to help-”   

“Well, Stark, I do not need your help. I need you to stop this madness. I-”    

A knock on the door interrupts them.    

“The interrogations are complete, for now,” A guard says. “They’re not going to get anything out of them tonight, so we are ready to take them to the Raft.”

“Great, he’ll be right with you,” Tony says. The guard leaves the door open for Thor to follow. “Thor, wait-”   

“I have to go back, Stark.”    

“I won’t say anything.” Tony’s voice drops. “About Cap. I already deleted all the recordings. And the camera’s are off now. Just,” Tony gaze remains awkwardly on his desk. “Did he say…”   

“We didn’t exactly have much time to talk. He said nothing of you.”

Tony almost looks disappointed. He says nothing more, and Thor leaves him sitting alone in the lab.

Thor’s fears are not assuaged by his conversation with Tony. It is clear that the guards are suspicious, perhaps because of how long it had taken him to dispatch the wyvern, and they take him back to his cell without mention of Loki. The magic is faint, but there. Just enough to assure him that Loki is alive and well, and not punished for his mistake. If he closes his eyes and concentrates, he can make the connection just a _little_ bit stronger.  
   

“I just don’t know Nat, it just seemed _off_.”    

“Steve, are you sure-”    

“Come on, I can’t have this conversation again.”    

“He didn’t say anything to suggest that-”    

“Nat…” Steve scrubs a hand over his face, thinking through all he had seen in his brief conversation with Thor. “The woman, don’t you remember that woman? That was looking for us? Astrid Iverson?”   

“Yeah, what about her?”   

“That was Thor.”   

“Thor using an alias? But why-”   

“No, I looked her up, she’s definitely real, and it was her who sent the message. Thor apparently asked her to try and find us. At some point, he was in contact with a lawyer in the Norwegian government and he asked her to find us. Does that sound like the actions of someone who’s 100% on board with the Accords?”

Natasha looks thoughtful. “I think it’s time to get into Rota.”  
   

A pulse of electricity takes out the security cameras around the west entrance. Three guards lay on the ground, unconscious. Natasha walks past them, silently breaks into a control room.    

“Okay, let’s see what you can tell me.” She pulls out a thumb drive and sticks it into the computer. Her fingers move swiftly across the keys, as she pulls up the files on the new Avengers, the Raft, and Ross himself. She downloads what she needs, opens a file on the Raft at random and begins to read.    

“ _Damn_.” She whispers as she reads. Then another file. And another.    

She reaches the end of her budgeted time. If she stays longer she could be discovered. So she tears herself away from the texts, makes sure the backup is complete and secure, and disappears back out into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a pretty big naval station in Rota - I figure Natasha would have no problem breaking in for their most sensitive files. What does she find there? You'll find out next week! How disturbing is it? Very! Why am I like this? I don't know!
> 
> And yes, I once again gave myself weird nightmares researching/writing about executions. It's always been something that's really viscerally freaked me out but I also can't help myself, I'm always researching weird things and then I find myself doing stuff like binge-watching 'The Innocent Man' on Netflix at 1am and when I finally go to sleep have nightmares. Great Thursday night. My brain, so healthy. (Also, great series. One of the exonerated men came within 5 days of being executed. Horrifying. Anyways, sorry, I meant to try not to be too explicitly anti-death penalty, failed, rambling, I'm going to go now, sorry...) 
> 
> Also, thank you all for your comments, I'm sorry if I don't get to answering all of them in a timely manner! I appreciate them all so, so much. <3


	3. Part I: Locked Up; Or: The Monster in the Basement (3/3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha reveals the disturbing information she found in the military base and a plan begins to hatch. Bruce tries to get allies to understand the danger they're all in. The atmosphere changes aboard the Raft and somewhere in the universe, Thanos is moving. 
> 
> [Warnings: continued Raft-related warnings, claustrophobia, dehumanization, threat of execution]
> 
> [There's a particularly graphic dehumanization/claustrophobic section towards the end of the chapter. It's a longer form accounting of something that Natasha describes. You'll know it when you see it, and if you prefer, skip to the next section break.]

Natasha returns in the dead of night, slipping into their apartment on silent feet. Steve catches her coming in because he had been already awake, waiting.

“All went well?” He whispers.

“Very well. I’ve got a lot. Maybe more than we bargained for.” They wake the others and Steve brews coffee. While they all get settled around the kitchen table, Natasha opens the laptop and uploads her stolen information.

“Steve, you know how much I hate saying this,” She says. “But you were right. Thor is not willingly participating in the support of the Accords. And he was not alone when he crash landed on Earth. Loki was with him.” A moment of surprised silence.

“I thought Loki was supposed to be dead,” Steve says. “That’s what Thor said, when he came back, when we went after the scepter…”

“Apparently not. He’s alive and both of them are being held on the Raft.” Steve drops his head to his hands.

“The Raft. _Shit_.”

“So what, they’re holding Loki hostage, to get Thor to go along with the Accords?” Sam asks. Wanda shivers, wrapping her arms around her torso.

“That’s _definitely_ what they’re doing. Loki is an insurance policy. As long as Thor remains cooperative, he stays alive and unharmed.”

“That explains a lot. But it’s going to make things more complicated.” Steve rubs at his beard. “It’s not just a matter of snagging Thor the next time he’s out on a mission. We’ll have to go into the Raft if we want to get them both out.”

“I doubt Thor’s going to be willing to leave without his brother,” Natasha says. “And even if he would, I don’t know if I condone just leaving Loki to be executed, even for all he’s done.”

“But the situation is _currently_ stable? If they’re keeping them alive and imprisoned, what’s the purpose of breaking them out?” Sam asks. “It would be a big risk, if we could just wait and see how things play out. The last few news conferences, you said Tony seemed like he wasn’t as sure any more-”

“There’s more,” Natasha says. “I managed to get into the Raft’s system itself while I was there. Downloaded some specs, those should help us if we do decide to bust them out, we won’t be going in blind. I skimmed the transcript of what Loki told Stark the night they crash landed here, there’s the video too if you want to watch. From what Thor said to Steve, and what Loki said to Stark during the interrogation, we may have bigger problems. Problems we might not be able to wait to see played out. It’s possible we’re on a bit of a time crunch here. And…” She hesitates, looking at the screen.

“What is it, Nat?” Steve prods.

She glances at Wanda. “This isn’t really for the faint of heart.”

“I think we can handle it,” Sam responds.

“Yes,” Wanda says. “I want to hear it.”

“I found the files, for both our prisoners.” 

“Files? They keep files?” Wanda asks.

“Yes. Very detailed files. I’m assuming on all their prisoners, but I pulled the ones for Thor and Loki to start.” Natasha swallows. “I think, before we make a decision about whether or not we’re going to take the risk of breaking them out, you need to hear what they’re doing to them.” She loads two documents onto the screen. “Loki is obviously the worse off of the two. Not that I’ve forgiven him for New York but…I don’t think anyone deserves this.”

She reads verbatim from the file, notes that were taken by the guards from the very beginning of their imprisonment. Describes precisely the types of restraints they were held in, the routine of their day, the rules for their behavior. “Loki’s let out only once a day, allowed to walk in a circle of five feet by eight feet, for twenty minutes. They keep a daily log.” She takes a deep breath. “‘Subject seems to fear the dark. Screams during lights out until it exhausts itself and falls asleep. Occasional violent nightmares, which involve thrashing against the chains. Sometimes has to be strapped down to avoid injuring self.’” Wanda covers her mouth with her hand. “This one’s the worst. From about a month ago or so: ‘Subject violated rule C when being fed today. Spoke to a guard. Punishment protocols enacted, two weeks without release from restraints. Only human interaction to be with masked personnel who administer the daily IV and feeding tube. New mask fitted to prisoner that allows for the GI tube to be inserted without muzzle removal.'”

“ _Jesus_.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Sam says. Wanda looks green too. But they don’t stop her from reading.

“‘End of punishment period. Subject smelled strongly of bodily fluids when cell was entered. Taken to shower and chained there while room was sprayed down. Fell into catatonia when returned to restraints. Associated prisoner was highly agitated - suspect some kind of contact between them. Will report to commanders, request to check on status of the next gen. magical bindings.’” Wanda shudders. She rises from her seat at the table and begins pacing. “They started allowing Thor to see him, if he behaved on missions. ‘Subject appears less agitated after visits from associated prisoner.’ That’s good then.” Sarcasm drips from her voice.

“Jesus, this is…this is torture. Even for someone like Loki…” Sam says.

“Yes. It’s masked by scientific language and rules and procedures, but, yes, he is being tortured. And held over Thor’s head as a hostage. They mean it, when they say they’re going to execute him if Thor acts out. They mention several times in the reports checking the expiration date on vials of something called ‘pentobarbital B,’ pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride. Pentobarbital is a sedative, the ‘B’ probably refers to whatever version they’ve concocted to make it strong enough to bring down a god. This is the classic lethal injection protocol. They’re serious. They’re ready to kill him if they feel they have to.”

“So that’s it then,” Sam says. “We’ve got one shot at this, we can’t mess it up.”

“But we have to get them out of there,” Wanda says. Her hands are shaking. “We can’t let them stay in there. Let them keep…”

“We’ll have to be patient. They’ll have to be patient. But you’re right. I think it’s unanimous. We try.”

“Not try,” Steve says firmly. “We do.”  
   

Bruce Banner, five years ago, would never had such a extensive ranking list of the worst ways to travel. As rainbow light swept over the receding Hulk and he felt his own self start to surface, he contemplated where traveling by raw bifrost would fit in on his little worst-ways-to-travel list. (Worse than traveling by Loki’s magic alone, better than the Devil's Anus. Always better than Southwest. Everything was better than Southwest.) It beat contemplating how he was rocketing through empty space, away from his friends and towards the unknown.

He nearly fainted when he crossed the planet’s atmosphere, but the Hulk’s lingering presence kept him clinging to awareness, suspended in the glowing rainbow light. He recognized that continent.

Heimdall had sent him to Earth. He crashed through shingles and drywall and floorboards as the Hulk fully surrendered, leaving him alone. And naked. To be found by a pair of…magicians?

Bruce has been hiding in the Sanctum with Steven Strange (“I thought you were a neurosurgeon, I read about your reconstructive technique in JAMA…” Strange just smiled. “I was a surgeon. I’ve found a…let’s say a higher calling.”) ever since. Bruce told him everything he remembers about Thanos, the attack on New York, and the Infinity Stones. Strange listened quietly, his friend Wong pacing as his story goes on.

“He will come for the Eye,” Wong said when he finished.

“The Eye? What, what _Eye_ , he’s looking for Infinity Stones…” Strange made an odd gesture before his chest and a necklace appeared with a giant green gem at the center.

“The Eye of Agamotto. The Time Stone.”

“And Mind is here too. In Vision, I really need to call Tony and Steve, the Avengers have to get ready, this is going to be big, way bigger than New York-” Bruce started to rise, but stopped at the look cast between Strange and Wong. “What, what’s that look?”

“There are some things you need to get caught up on.” It was Bruce’s turn to listen, as Strange explained as much as he knew about the breakup of the Avengers. “There are things I’m not sure of, but I can tell you that the Avengers are unlikely to be able to help you.”

“Who else is there?”

“There’s us. There’s the Sanctum.”

“No disrespect, and thanks for helping me out, but you cannot take Thanos. He beat the shit out of _Asgardians_ , Hell, he kicked the _Hulk’s_ ass, what do you think you can do against him, when he comes for the Stones?”

“We will be ready. I am sworn to defend the Eye, I will stop at nothing to protect it.”

“You’re going to lose. I’ve seen this arrogance before. This arrogance got us Ultron. This arrogance is going to get the universe destroyed.”

“We’ll see,” Strange said simply and the conversation was all but ended. Quietly, Bruce ‘borrowed’ Wong’s cell phone and called Stark Industries.

“ _Jesus_ , Banner, what the _fuck?_ ”

“Tony, I can explain-”

“Where have you _been?_ We looked for you for months, you just _vanished_.”

“I know. It’s…it’s a long story. There’s something I need to-”

“Where are you? I can come pick you up, just give me an address and I’ll send a car or a jet-”

The instincts bred by running for so long after becoming the Hulk, told him to wait. “Not yet Tony, I just wanted you to know that I’m alive and I’m safe for now, but there’s something-”

“You’re not safe, not if you’re just wandering the planet, if they catch you…unless. You’ve already sided with…?”

“I haven’t taken anyone’s side, Tony, I just need to know my options.”

Tony sighed, his displeasure clear. “Fine. I’m really glad to hear you’re alright.” Tony gave him a video chat number and promised to pass on his well wishes to Vision. Bruce snuck Wong’s cell phone back into his desk. He checked in a couple times more, eventually making Strange go out and get him a used iPhone 4 with a pay-per-minute sim card. With a little tinkering, he tore out the tracking device and upgraded the video capacity to ensure secure and stable video calls.

Tony started to act odd. Even more odd than usual. As if he was distracted by something, which wasn’t unusual in itself, but there’s something about his posture that made Bruce think it was an act. Tony was never a good liar, or actor. He got too blustery, trying to cover the lie with expressive hand gestures and too many jokes. Bruce started to feel uneasy.

One night he called Tony and no one answered.

Four days later, Strange summoned him to the living room, where the evening news was about to start.

“You need to see this.”

_“Tonight on Metro News 1, after a long absence, the Avenger Thor has resurfaced, signing the Sokovia Accords and releasing a brief statement in support of the UN’s agenda on Enhanced Individuals…”_

“I’m impressed,” Strange said with an air that suggested he was less _impressed_ and more _perturbed_. “I should have been able to detect Thor’s presence on this planet. They must have developed better wards. I don’t think Thor possesses the ability to hide himself from me. Maybe Loki could-”

“You don’t sense him?” Strange shakes his head.

“There was a spike of power, a few weeks ago. It was a flash, quick and left no trace,” Wong said. “I thought it was a natural phenomenon. There has been nothing else, so it must have been Thor.”

“Weeks.” Weeks that Thor had been on Earth. Tony had known. That must have been why he’d been acting so oddly. Bruce was not happy.

He called Tony and it all came crashing down on his head.

Over the following weeks, his blind fury lessens to simply bitter disappointment. He starts to strategize, starts to try and convince Tony to let him see Thor, or to at least _listen_ to their warnings about Thanos.

“Thor told me all of this,” Tony says, frustrated. “God, he went over and over it in the weeks he was here.”

Bruce changes tactics. “Why didn’t you listen, then? And why did you turn them in then, if they were there for weeks? What changed?”

Tony paces before the camera. “You didn’t see how they were, it was weird, Bruce. I think Loki had to have…I don’t know, mind controlled him like he did Clint-”

“I don’t think so. You weren’t there, on the Ark-” Tony rolls his eyes. “Loki isn’t what you think he is.”

“You’re trusting that a…a _super-villain_ -”

“I spent a year and a half in pretty close quarters with that ‘super-villain.’ He didn’t do too many villainous things. He’s definitely, _definitely_ not the big bad here. And I watched the way Thor and Loki interacted with each other when they’re not fighting. And well, yeah, they fought a lot, especially at the beginning, but they made up pretty quickly, or set their arguments aside to work together. They’re really close. I think that’s _normal_. Then we managed to pry out of Loki what happened before New York, after he tried to kill himself on Asgard and…Tony, he’s suffered. Yeah, he is responsible for a lot of destruction on Earth, but it wasn’t…entirely his fault. There’s the bigger threat, the one who was pulling the strings-”

“This ‘Thanos.’”

“Yes. We’re going to need to trust Loki if we want to stand a chance against Thanos.”

Tony flops onto a stool. “How do you know he’s not still mind controlling Thor? Mind controlling you, mind controlling _everyone_.”

“Well for one, I feel like if he’s able to control people so completely, why did he let himself get locked up? He could have just put the spell on you, or Ross, or the guards they were left alone with…anyone who would have given them the chance to escape. Two…I don’t think he can’t mind control me. I don’t think I can be mind controlled at all, actually.” Tony raises an eyebrow. “Once, on the Ar- while we were traveling, there was this thing. They called it a curse, but I don’t know, some alien…thing. It took over people’s minds, turned them against each other. It even worked on Thor…but not me. The Hulk just took over, didn’t even really freak out about it. Just hung out in the bowels of the ship for a few days, drinking with some of the Sakaarans until they managed to break the curse. There were a couple other times that magic was involved and it didn’t do much to me…didn’t do _anything_ to the Hulk. Stuff like the Mind Stone…doesn’t really invade your mind, it just nudges it in the wrong direction. And you remember how on edge I was that whole time. I was about an inch away from Hulking out whenever I was in range of the Stone. I don’t think I can be mind controlled without the Hulk breaking through.” Bruce sighs. “Look, it’s just a theory. But I’m just asking you to consider the possibility that we’re telling the truth. That we’re - that Loki’s _in_ more danger than he _is_ a danger to us.”

Tony looks a bit spooked. “This all sounds…just _batshit_ , Bruce.”

“Hasn’t it all sounded batshit the last few years? Jesus, everything that’s happened to me for the past decade or so has been batshit crazy. You have to adjust to the new normal, Tony. Recalibrate. Or there will be consequences.”

Tony glances towards his desk drawer and Bruce wonders what he’s thinking about.

“…I’ll think about it.” Tony says finally. “I’ll just…think about it. But Bruce, just be careful. And try to understand…I’m just trying to do the right thing. To make things right, make up for…mistakes.”

“I know, Tony. But if you don’t start to take Thanos seriously, things are going to go south, fast. You’re going to need Thor, and Loki, before the end.”

After hanging up with Tony, Bruce checks his email, the new Gmail he set up under a assumed name. After weeks of waiting, sending out feelers, there’s a response, tucked in among the spam.  
   

The atmosphere in the Raft had changed. Thor feels a sort of electric anticipation in the air, like the growing storm.

Thor will not admit it even to himself, he is too afraid that somehow transmuting it into conscious thought will bring their jailer’s attention, though he knows these humans do not possess the ability to see into his mind. But from the moment he left Steve in that clearing, he just knew. And he waited.

One night he dreamt that Loki transformed into a hawk and flew away. When he woke in the morning he could feel that something in the air had shifted. There was something different about this dream, something different in the air and Thor thinks he might finally be starting to understand prophecy. It conjures an unnameable feeling in his chest that was only identifiable when he saw the blinking lights of the surveillance cameras blink out, one by one.

Hope.

Natasha appears from the darkness, scarlet hair now white blond. “Hey, majesty,” She grins. “Ready to get out of here?”

“And my-”

“Steve and Sam - you remember Sam, right? - they’ve got him. They’ll be with him now.” Sure enough, Thor feels confusion, suspicion, through their magical connection. “We’re going to get you _both_ out of here, promise. But you and I need to secure our ride, first.” There’s a beep and everything blinks out. The locks, the stifling bonds on his power, the lights save for emergency strips of glowing green light on the floor, all go out in a moment. “Alright. Let’s go. Careful of the bodies, don’t want you to trip, or wake them up. Now we just need to cut the power to the rest of the prison. This was just a localized pulse, we need to overload the whole system in,” She checks her watch. “Fifteen seconds.” Thor smiles and follows her into the darkness. She takes a left.

“Wait,” He says. “There’s another electrical hub, here. And a short cut to the stairs.”

“You know your way around.”

“I have been thinking about this for a long, long time.” They reach the electric box and Natasha pries it open.

“We just need to fry the system,” She explains. “Some stuff will be on generators, but we need the communications, the force-fields-”

“Allow me, Agent Romanov.” Thor reaches a hand towards the tangle of circuits and wires, and lightning flashes in the corridor. And then darkness.  
   

Deep down in the bowels of the Raft, just as Natasha is breaking into the prison cells, Loki’s mind drifts a bit as he lists in his chains. His knees ache as they always did now. He had felt something odd from Thor a little while ago, but then their connection had dimmed. Thor must be distracted by something. Perhaps they’re sending him out again. Loki positively loathes when Thor’s sent on a mission and he’s left truly alone in this aquatic prison. And afraid. He had wondered, many times, what would happen if Thor died on a mission? Would they tell him at all? Just let him rot for eternity in this place? Or would they just execute him, his use as a hostage suddenly expired? They’d shown him the needles, explained what they did. If he was feeling resistant, they would leave them on a table in his cell and he would drive himself mad staring at them for the endless hours of silence and boredom.

Thor had been injured once on a mission, fairly badly it seemed. At least enough to keep him out of the Raft for much longer than usual. As the days went by, Loki had become progressively more apprehensive. That’s why he had made the mistake, and violated the central rule.

They had just finished feeding him the first meal of the day and were preparing the restraints for his return to the cell. Loki had gotten up the courage then to open his mouth and, with a voice hoarse from disuse, asked about Thor.

The guard’s expression had gone blank in an instant. He set down the restraints he’d been readying, and walked out the door without a word. They left him there for perhaps half an hour, as he grew more and more nervous about his punishment for speaking. Perhaps they would give him a reprieve. It had been weeks and he hadn’t uttered a sound. He’d just done it once, just one question, they’d have to give him a second chance.

The one in charge of his imprisonment entered with four guards, looking disappointed.

“You knew what would happened if you spoke. We warned you.”

“I’m-”

He struck Loki across the face before he could get the apology out. “Get him tied up.” The wrestled him into the straitjacket and shackled his feet. Instead of the usual muzzle they brought an odd one he’d never see before. They had to hold him down when he roared and fought them shoving it into his mouth. It was extremely uncomfortable, the usual rubber now a tube that, forced so deep into his mouth it nearly triggered his gag reflex. But he could breathe through his mouth now, which was an odd improvement to his condition.

He didn’t really believe they’d really leave him like this for two straight weeks. Not until night came and the lights clicked off without sign of his guards. His bladder already felt heavy and full and he shifted uncomfortably to take some of the pressure off. By the time the lights clicked on in the morning, he was panting with the effort to hold it in, nearly writhing with the pain of his need. Surely they would come, surely they were not this cruel.

He understood that they would keep their word when he could not hold it in anymore and his body surrendered and soaked his pants with a stream of urine. Humiliated, furious tears came to his eyes as the smell hit his nose. He spent the next several hours vowing curses and suffering to the ones who had stripped him of his dignity like this.

They had come, nearly at lights out, but it was not his usual guards. These were medical personnel, dressed all in white and wearing surgical masks. They did not acknowledge him at all. They just manhandled him, stripping off his still soaked pants and tilting him backward. One of them held him down while the other brings forth a long tube. He really screamed then, a rage filled howl, as he struggled to break their hold. The tube was forced through the mask, down his throat and sustenance is passed directly into his stomach.

He was shaking hard when they left him sitting half naked with his throat and stomach aching. He feels nauseous, saliva filling his mouth and running down his jaw behind the gag. He cannot think of revenge now, only of suppressing the urge to vomit.

They did this every night for the promised two weeks.

By the end he was raving. His enter body felt like a solid, aching cramp. He tried a few times around the tight bindings to get to his feet, just to stretch his legs a bit, but the chains didn’t allow him to move that much. He could crouch a little, but that did almost nothing to alleviate the cramping and there was nothing to be done about the pain in his arms and shoulders.

At first he tried to preserve his dignity as long as possible, to hold back his bodily functions as his bladder throbbed and his stomach cramped, but by the end of the first week he gave up preventing it entirely. He kept enough rationality to know vomiting would be even more uncomfortable, and carried the risk of asphyxiation besides, so each night after they force the tube down his throat he simply had to wait until the nausea subsided and he could drift off to something like sleep.

Thor returned and their magical bond was faint. Loki didn’t have the energy to renew the connection without physical contact. He felt dim confusion and concern radiating from his brother, but quickly gave up trying to sense more.

Three days before the end, he couldn’t take it anymore. He lost his mind, his sense of place and time and self, struggling violently against the bonds. He shrieked and howled, becoming just the mindless beast that they believed him to be, and the monster they bound him as.

Not that he remembered any of this. He only returned to himself in the darkness, many hours since his fit had begun. He was lying suspended at an odd angle in the chains, his throat raw, muscles twitching, and joints screaming in agony. His last memory, it had been light in his cell. He woke in the dark and remembered none of what had happened in the interim. He gingerly righted himself, breathing heavily, blinking and seeing nothing. He was afraid, afraid of how much longer he could last and he wept, desperately reaching out with his magic. It was still faint, but he could feel _something_ from his brother. A sudden alertness, a thrum of anxiety, but then a forced calm. A lullaby. Loki cried through the night, though Thor silently sang to him until the lights came on.

They finally pulled him out of the cell, at the end of two weeks, and he was nearly catatonic. He was completely limp, unable to stand when they unbound him and dumped him in the shower under a spray of cold water. When the water hit him he began to cry and did not stop until they returned him to his cell, which smelled strongly of bleach. The muzzle was back to the usual one, and the routine continued. He trembled like a leaf for the entirety of his first usual dinner, but soon things seemed to return to normal.

Thor was sent out again and, blissfully, was allowed to see him for fifteen whole minutes upon his return. Loki sobbed in relief for the entire duration, pressing so close that Thor was nearly knocked over. Thor held him, baffled at his hysteria, and stroked his hair, and even quietly hummed a little as Loki wove their magics tighter. It calmed him enough. Not entirely, but enough to feel like he wasn’t entirely unraveling.

He does not try to speak anymore.  
   

Now, he feels a spike of jittery nerves from Thor. That’s concerning. A sound, from farther out in the prison. Then hissing, just outside his door. He blinks, tilting his head in confusion.

The door to his cell slides open and he jumps. There had been no siren and he rushes to get on his knees before he is punished for violating this rule too. It takes him a second to recognize the man who enters his cell. He has grown older, more ragged, and now is sporting a thick beard. But he recognizes Captain America. The man with him, Loki doesn’t know.

“Jesus,” The unknown man says. “I knew what we were walking into, but…Jesus.”

“Sam, can you get the straps off?” The Captain — Steve, Loki remembers — kneels in front of him. Loki flinches away, as far as the chains allow, breathing heavily. Is this it? The Avengers coming to put an end to his suffering? He fears death just as much as he welcomes it as a release from this prison. “Hey, it’s okay,” Steve says, reaching out a hand as if to calm him. “We’re not going to hurt you, we’re here to get you out.” Loki still jerks away, unwilling to be touched. He jumps, yelping, when Sam starts to unbuckle the leather loop holding him to the walls. “It’s okay,” Steve says again, soothing. “Easy, you’re okay.” He glances upward. “Should be…now.” The lights flicker and a humming dies. For a split second, Loki feels his magic again, flowing through him. He reaches for it, to dissolve the chains, but before he can the bindings activate again, drawing on the supply of a generator, and he doubles over with a muted cry of pain, his magic roughly stuffed back down.

“Natasha was right, we can’t undo the mechanized locks here. We’ll have to wait until we’re on the plane. How long do we have left?”

“Two minutes and fifteen seconds.” Steve reaches forward to grasp Loki’s arms and he jerks away. “Loki, stop, it’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you,” He says again. “We’re going to take you to your brother, how’s that?” Loki hesitates, tempted by the mention of Thor. He reaches out with his magic, a question, and receives reassurance back. He still flinches when Steve touches him, but he doesn’t struggle out of his grip this time. “We’re not going to hurt you. We’re going to take you to Thor. But you have to help us help you. Can you stand?” Loki hesitates a moment longer, then nods. Steve helps him to stand and Sam quickly picks the lock on his ankle shackles.

“Let’s go.” They move slowly through the halls, bypassing the elevator. Loki’s never been in this part of the prison before. The cells turn into offices that almost look like they could belong in an ordinary office building. The carpet feels odd beneath his bare feet, so used to the cold tile. There’s a door at the end of the hall, marked EMERGENCY ONLY.

“Quickly,” Steve says, pulling Loki along. They open the door to a tight room. It’s not until Sam slams the door shut and hits a button that Loki realizes its an escape hatch. The room pressurizes, making his ears pop painfully and then they’re moving, rising through the waves.

They crest the surface and Sam wrenches the door open. Loki’s eyes water at the bright sunlight streaming through the door, at the warm air. The breeze brushes against his face and he smells salt and fish and the sea. A great black jet hovers above them.

“Up we go,” Sam says, climbing out of the hatch. Then Steve is lifting him, Sam passing him along, and very familiar arms wrap around his torso and pull him into the blinding sunshine.  
   

“Have you found her yet?”

“Not yet,” Ebony Maw says. “I apologize, master, but the Guardians of the Galaxy, as they call themselves, are slippery.” Thanos rises from his throne.

“This should get her attention.” Knowhere looms before them. “Burn it.”

“Right away.” Ebony Maw drifts away. Thanos watches until the fire catches, the screams rising from the disgusting, crowded planet. They scream because they don’t understand. They are not strong enough to make the sacrifices necessary for a peaceful universe. So he will do it for them.

“Now, we wait for you, daughter.”

Two gems sparkle in the gauntlet now. A third will soon join it, once he pries it out of the hands of the Collector. A fourth, once his foolish daughter gives up the location of the Soul Stone. Once he’s gathered the stones spread across the galaxy, he will finally be ready to journey to Earth to crush their pathetic forces and gain the last two stones.

He is so close to victory he can taste it. Soon, the universe will be in balance. There will be peace and suffering in equal measure. It will be a glorious equilibrium. Death will be appeased and he can watch the sun rise on a grateful universe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus concludes part 1! The next two chapters are almost done, so I should still be good to post next Sunday. (Part 3 is a little less done, so there will probably be a little bit of a break before that.) 
> 
> Finally, we're out of the Raft! But also Thanos is making a move towards gaining another stone, so that's not so good. 
> 
> Additional notes:  
> 1) Yes, that is the news station from _How I Met Your Mother_  
>  2) No, I don't know what's wrong with me. (I came so close to deleting That Section like fifteen times)  
> 3) Yes, I feel like a terrible person.  
> 4) I did slow down Thanos's timeline for acquiring the stones and I intensified his motives a bit. He's still on the 'balance the universe to save resources' thing, but accompanied with some psychopathic 'Death's Lover' stuff too.  
> 5) Thor's actually getting semi-decent at the whole 'Seer' thing!  
> 6) Finally, I don't mean any disrespect to Southwest Airlines. I picked out a random US-based airline that I remember friends complaining about and appeared on several 'worst airlines' lists. Apologies. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading so far! Next chapters are a bit quieter, as everyone regroups post-Raft rescue.


	4. Interlude: Fear in These Walls; or Lithuania Seems a Nice Place to Rest (1/2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Cap hides out in rural Lithuania for a bit, in quiet and peace. Disaster is still brewing, both on Earth and far away, but for just a little while, none of it matters.

Loki stumbles when Thor sets him on his feet on the floor of the jet, and they quickly guide him to the bench. Now that he is out of the prison, the bonds feel impossibly tighter and he wants them _off_. He tests them a little, straining against that awful straightjacket, but it does not budge an inch. Thor rests his hands on his shoulders and Loki presses closer to him.

“It’s okay, stay calm-”

“I’ll take the controls from Wanda,” Steve says as he and Sam clamber aboard. “You get started on those locks, Nat.”

“Got it. Hey, Loki, remember me? I just have to deprogram these locks and we’ll get you out of here in no time. You’re safe now, okay?” Loki nods. “Which should I do first?”

“The muzzle,” Thor answers after a moment, undoubtedly picking up on Loki’s unconscious thought, through the connection between their magics that Loki had cultivated over the past few months. He’s hovering anxiously, not taking his hands off Loki’s shoulders. Natasha has to go behind him to work on the locks, which makes Loki jump. He tries to glance back at her, but Thor steadies him. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “You’re okay. Look at me, and keep still.” Loki forces himself to keep his eyes on Thor, even when he feels Natasha’s hands at the base of his skull, working at the locks. Thor grips Loki’s shoulders tight as Natasha works. There’s a beeping sound, which makes them all jump, but then the muzzle is falling away, guided by Thor’s hand.

Loki coughs, spits, then says the only thing he can think of at the moment: “You changed your hair.”

Natasha chuckles. “Yeah, had to, the red was too noticeable.”

“I preferred the red,” He croaks.

“Hm. Yeah, me too. Okay, collar next.”

“Thor-” Loki’s voice breaks.

“It’s okay,” Thor says. “We’re safe now.”

“ _How?_ I don’t understand.” His mind is spinning. When he first saw Captain America in the cell he had believed he was about to die, the Avengers finally calling in their claim on his life. But instead they have removed him from his prison, and they do not seem to wish him harm. Or even to be particularly angry with him.

“Steve has broken into the Raft before, apparently,” Thor smiles a little. “It seems they cannot keep him out.” That does not even begin to answer his questions.

“But _why?_ ”

“Why not?” Natasha says. “We’ve been on the run from Ross for a while, we don’t agree with what he’s doing. Especially the Raft. When they say, ‘I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.’ Well. They’re talking about the Raft.” The collar falls away and Loki cries out as magic floods back into him. He shudders as the full weight of his powers return to him.

“Oh, _oh_ , I missed this,” He groans. He drops his head to Thor’s shoulder, overcome with the strength of it. Natasha begins to work at the locks on the back of the straitjacket, as Loki breathes raggedly and presses his forehead into his brother’s shoulder.

“Breathe, Loki,” Thor says. “Just breathe.” One by one the locks beep open, and then the jacket is off. They carefully untangle Loki’s limbs from the heavy garment and cast it aside. Loki’s hands shake as he grasps at Thor’s shirt.

“We’re free?”

“Yes, brother,” Thor says softly. Loki’s expression crumples. “We’re free. We’re safe.”

Loki’s eyes shine, but he doesn’t cry, not yet, too burnt out and shocked. “I still don’t… _understand_. What about Ross? What about Stark? _Why?_ ” He’s shaking, mind whirling and arms aching as they always did when he was released from the jacket. He is overwhelmed by the return of his powers, the freedom to use his voice at will, the amount of people around him. Thor cups his neck.

“We can talk more when we get to the safehouse,” Natasha moves away from his back, tossing the restraints in a pile on the floor.

“Just try to relax,” Sam says from where he had been quietly monitoring in the corner. “Know that we’re not going to hurt you, and we’ll go over everything once you’ve had a chance to rest a bit.” Loki turns back to Thor, who has not taken his eyes off Loki’s face.

“It’s okay,” Thor says. And more than the words, the sheer relief he feels radiating off his brother and pulsing through their bond shatters his last apprehensions.

After months of being cold and bound and alone, his limbs are loose and his brother’s hand is soft and warm, a gentle touch after months of _nothing_. Emotion - relief, grief, shame - spills over, and then there are tears on his cheeks and soft sobs starting in his chest. He buries his face in his hands and leans into Thor. He presses his ear into Thor’s chest so he can hear his heartbeat, feel the warmth radiating off of him. Thor wraps one arm across his back, the other around his torso to cradle his head, holding it fast to his chest. He softly strokes his hair back as Loki quietly cries.

“I’m sorry,” Thor says and the words vibrate in his chest, against Loki’s ear. “I’m so sorry.” Loki presses closer and silently begs Thor not to let him go.  
   

Wanda was profoundly relieved when Steve told her she did not have to return to the Raft. That she could be in charge of monitoring the quinjet, even though her piloting skills were still a bit shaky. Steve no doubt remembered the state she had been in when he pulled her out of the Raft, how distant and subdued she had been. It had taken her nearly two weeks for her to stop spiraling, to stop having to be reminded to eat and drink and sleep. She is grateful to Steve, and more so when she glances back upon their return and sees how Loki has been bound. She watched as he stumbled when set on his feet and then turned back to the controls, heart racing.

Steve joins her and takes over piloting. He quickly switches the controls and pilots them north.

“We’ll be taking a bit of a long route,” Steve says. “The stealth tracking on the quinjet should be enough, but I don’t want to make it too easy for them.”

“Was there resistance?”

“Not much,” Steve says. “We knocked out a lot of guards, but killing the communications first was a good call. Couldn’t call for backup, we kept our time on site to less than 4 minutes, so we were out of there before anyone in the high command knew there was a problem.” The sun sets on the horizon as they fly over the seas, towards the arctic circle. Wanda wonders at how calmly Steve piloted the aircraft over the icy waters, where he had crashed and spent nearly a century, when she couldn’t even look at the Raft without feeling sick to her stomach. Natasha joins them up front.

“Locks undone,” She says quietly. “Wasn’t too bad, once I got through the encryption. Doesn’t seem like he’s injured, but we didn’t want to start poking and prodding yet.”

“Probably a good idea,” Steve responds.

“Muscle tone actually looks surprisingly decent, Asgardians really are sturdy. And,” She lowers her voice further. “Given the last time we saw him, I would have expected a lot more rage. Or at least some kind of reaction. Seems pretty subdued. Thor’s got him, Sam’s watching. I think they’re okay for now.” Wanda lets Natasha have her seat in the co-pilot’s chair and sneaks back to the passenger compartment.

Loki is doubled over at the waist, tucked against Thor’s chest. Wanda cannot see his face, buried in his hands as it is. Thor looks thoughtful, staring into the distance over Loki’s head. He rocks his brother faintly, shushing him when he shudders.

She remembers Thor, back in those awful, grief-hazed days after Ultron. The expression on his own face when he looked at her, like he was breaking apart in the wake of her grief, and how he had left soon after, with only a short goodbye to the others and no words to her. He has changed so much since she saw him then, the short hair and lost eye the least of it. She can feel the edges of his mind, how his thoughts gravitate towards the form in his arms. She feels the deep well of protectiveness, and the equal terror and worry.

They don’t seem to notice her entrance, so it seems alright that she stays, watching over them, as Thor smoothes back his brother’s hair and breathes in shaky inhales.

Natasha comes back rouses them when they’re getting close to their destination, in the middle of the night. They had not quite fallen to sleep, though Sam had drifted off against the side of the jet.

“Here,” Natasha says. “We brought you some clothes. Change out of those scrubs. We’ll land the jet and have to hike a ways to get to the safehouse.”

“Where are we?” Thor asks, taking the clothes she holds out.

“Lithuania. In Eastern Europe. We’ll be in the countryside, SHIELD won’t look for us here.”

“You’re certain?” Loki asks, looking nervous as he pulls on a thick grey sweater. When he’s dressed, he hugs his arms to his chest and steps back, closer to Thor.

“As certain as we can be. And if not, we’ve got contingency plans. We’ve been on the run from SHIELD for a year, we know what we’re doing.” Loki looks to Thor.

“I trust them,” Thor says quietly. “We must.” Loki just nods, and inches closer.

“It’ll be a little bit of a trek once we land. We don’t stay too close to the jet, in case they break through the encryption on the tracking software and shielding.”

The night is chilly but clear as they step out from the landed jet. Steve and Sam ready their packs and hand one to Wanda.

“I can-” Thor starts, but Steve silences him with a gesture.

“Don’t worry about it. I’d rather your hands free, in case…” He glances at Loki.

“I am fine,” Loki says sharply. “You need not treat me like I will faint at any moment.” His voice is still hoarse from the months of disuse. Wanda does think he looks rather pale, and he continues to tremble slightly. But as they leave the jet and set off down the thin path in the forest, he keeps up well with the group, and even conjures a glowing pale green ball to light their way. It’s a steadier illumination than flashlights and he demonstrates how it can be vanished in a moment in case of threat.

Wanda is transfixed by the light, following at a distance. She is curious, but can also feel around Loki deep suspicion and anxiety, and so keeps her distance. She lets Thor walk between them, hover protectively around his brother.

Once, there’s the sound of a jet overhead, and Steve waves them down. Loki vanishes his light and they crouch in the brush for a tense minute before the sounds of the aircraft fade into the distance. They are shaky and cautious when they continue, Loki especially. His witchlight quivers with the intensified shake in his hands, flickering like a dim candlelight.

It’s nearly three in the morning when the path breaks out into a clearing - no, a farm. There is, illuminated by moonlight, a farmhouse and barn, spread across barren fields.

“This way,” Steve says and leads them to the farmhouse. When they’re inside, he draws the curtains and lights a few candles. “We don’t want to draw more attention to ourselves, not right away at least, so we’ll keep the electric lights off for now. Grab a candle, I’ll show you where you’ll all be sleeping.” Wanda takes a candle, but Loki keeps his witchlight, dimming it and holding it close to his body like he would a candle. Wanda wonders if she will ever be able to shape her own magic with such precision.

The farmhouse is little more than a cottage. There is a kitchen and a living room with a massive hearth on the first floor, and two bedrooms on the second. One contains a wide double bed for Wanda and Natasha to share, the second is for Thor and Loki. There is a small attic with two twin beds that Steve and Sam plan to cram themselves into.

Wanda readies herself for bed and crawls beneath the covers. Her candle sits on the bedside table and casts a warm orange glow over the room. She barely feels tired, the excitement of the escape and the anticipation of the coming challenges lending her energy despite the hour. It takes a long time for Natasha to come to bed. While she waits, she strains to hear something from the other room. There is only soft, indistinguishable voices, things moving around on the floor as they settle into the house. There’s the sounds of Steve and Sam clambering up the ladder to the attic, then their footsteps on the ceiling. Natasha finally returns to the bedroom and Wanda pretends to be asleep. Natasha blows out the candle and slips between the covers.

The house in the middle of nowhere is so quiet after weeks of staying amidst the noise of the city. Wanda listens to the wind in the rafters and the utter silence and slowly falls asleep.  
   

“It’s so quiet,” Loki whispers. He’s sitting crosslegged on one of the beds, holding his witchlight between his hands and studying it intently.

“Loki,” Thor says and he raises his eyes to his brother. “Do you need anything? Water? Food?” Loki shakes his head. “Do you want to sleep?” He nods. Loki is being so, so quiet and it is beginning to unnerve Thor. He takes a deep breath and reminds himself that this was not going to be easy, but that he would just have to remain calm. “Do you want me to stay with you?”

Loki had gone back to staring into his light but now his attention snaps back to Thor. “What?” He says, quickly. Thor feels a sudden pulse of nerves that are not his own. “Of course.”

“I just thought…you’ve been alone, for months. I don’t want to crowd you.” The foreign nerves dissipate, replaced by something like rejection.

“Oh. You have been alone for months as well,” Back to the light. “Do you wish not to be crowded?"

“No, not at all, that’s not what I meant. I just…Loki, I know things can’t…just go back to the way they were…”

“Do you mean back to the way things were on Asgard or back to the way things were on the Ark?” There’s a tightness in his chest. He feels a thousand miles away from his brother, and he doesn’t know how to reach him. They are no longer locked away separately, but it’s like he’s out of practice being this close. Months of silent, distant caretaking through a psychic bond and now that he has Loki back before him, it’s like he doesn’t remember how to comfort him normally.

But then Loki looks at him and the expression on his face is plain relief and trust that Thor feels some of his apprehension drain away. “I know too,” Loki whispers. “That it won’t be the same. But we could…just forget that, for now. Yes?”

“Of course, brother,” Thor says. “Of course.” It’s a bit awkward, on the thin bed. He should have thought to mention something to Steve. But they fit together, Loki tucked into his chest. Thor draws the covers over them both.

Loki twitches, breath hitching.

“Are you alright?” Thor says. “Do you need me to-”

“Fine. Don’t, don’t move.” Loki relaxes, only to tense again in the next moment.

“Shhh, you’re alright,” He soothes, thumb tracing a circle on his arm, and that seems to do the trick. Loki goes limp against him and they doze off.

Not for long.

That first night is _hard_. Loki wakes frequently, sometimes as soon as twenty minutes after drifting off, not knowing where he was. He startles awake with soft cries, fighting against Thor’s grip one moment, clinging to him the next. At dawn, the little room fills with light and they fall, finally, into a deep, solid sleep.  
   

Loki wakes. By the light in the room, it must be afternoon. Thor still slumbers beside him, his arm tossed over his body. He’s warm, his body still feels heavy and tired, and for several minutes he lies perfectly still. He cannot tell if he wants to push Thor away, the feeling of touch overwhelming, or pull him closer, almost as desperate for contact and affection as he was after his fall through the Void. The touch then had been…

That decides it, and he rolls towards his brother, folding himself into Thor’s chest. Thor stirs.

“Are you alright?” Are the first words out of his mouth. Loki nods. “What time is it?”

“Late, I think,” He whispers.

“We should go find the others,” Thor gets up. “Get the lay of this place.”

Loki sits up, but does not rise, watching as Thor pulls on his borrowed sweater. “I am sorry,” Loki says in little more than a whisper. This place is so quiet, he feels his voice is a violation of the peace. “For last night.”

“What do you mean?” Thor asks.

“I kept you up. I’m sure you slept as little as I.”

“Loki, I wouldn’t expect you to sleep soundly, in a strange place, after-” Loki shivers. His limbs still feel odd and floaty, unused to their liberty. Thor sits beside him and studies his face.

“Are you sure you can trust them?” Loki whispers. “What if they’re using us and once they have whatever they want they will shut us away again? We should-”

“I trust them. Look, there’s something I need to tell you, about…all of this. I should have told you before, and I am sorry that I kept it from you,” Thor sighs. “When we were still staying with Stark, in New York, I became suspicious.” Thor tells him about the Sokovia Accords, about his trip to Norway, the press conferences, the hearings they had forced him to attend with Loki’s life acting as the sword over his head. What he had learned about Steve and his own fugitive status. “They were locked up too,” Thor finishes. “If they were to turn us in, they would be arrested and imprisoned as well. There’s no reason for them to betray us.”

“And if Ross offers them _their_ freedom for our lives?” Loki returns.

Thor sighs. “I know. I don’t believe they will do such a thing. But you are right: I do not know for sure. And you have no reason to trust them - or me. I have failed,” Thor has to stop to clear his throat. “I have failed, time and time again, to keep you safe. You have no reason to trust me when I say that I _will_ protect you. At all costs.” Thor grasps his arm where it rests on his knee. “I promise, this time, if I feel even the slightest suspicion, we will run. Just us. And we’ll figure it out from there.” 

“Alright. Thor, it’s not…it wasn’t your fault.”

“Of course it was,” He responds.

“I wish you had told me, about the Accords and your suspicions,” Loki says. “But I don’t blame you, for what they did to us. And I’m not exactly one to scold you for keeping secrets.” Thor just smiles sadly.  “Really. It was not your fault.”

“Come, brother,” Thor rises. “Let’s go find food.”

They find Wanda in the kitchen, reading a newspaper.

“Oh!” She startles as they enter. “Hello! You slept a long time, I’m sure you’re starving. I made some soup this morning, it’s not much more than broth, I’m afraid, but better than the dried rations. Steve and Natasha went to go grocery shopping a little while ago, they’re not back yet. Sam’s fixing the electricity. So it’s just us.”

“And you are…?”

“Oh!” She says again. “Yes, we have not been introduced. Wanda, I’m Wanda.” The name stirs a bit of a memory, but he can’t quite recall what Thor has told him about her. She watches him very closely, but her expression is open and curious so he does not shy away, instead sitting across from her at the table while Thor brings water and a bowl of soup. “Sorry for the soup. It will be better once we have proper groceries.”

“It’s fine,” Loki says. “Thank you.” Thor is watching him closely, eyes darting back and forth between him and Wanda. He is clearly nervous about their interaction, and Loki files that away to ask about later. He sips his soup though he does not feel particularly hungry, stomach too twisted in nervous knots, but it makes Thor look relieved so he does it. And after a few sips he realizes it has indeed made him feel a bit less queasy, and a bit more real.

Steve and Natasha return after about thirty minutes, carrying bags of groceries and trailed by Sam.

“Electricity success! Plus, soon to be, drumroll…hot water! This place is starting to feel less like the dark ages every minute.” Sam says.

“Come on, I have to show you three something,” Steve says. “Nat and Sam will take care of the groceries.” The air has a chill to it as they set out across the yard. Loki crosses his arms over his chest and lingers close Thor. Steve leads them to the barn and Loki unconsciously draws closer to Thor. “We’re pretty sure that no one’s tailed us in the jet, so no one should be looking for us here, but to be safe, I don’t think you all should be seen. Nat and I sold the cover story while we got groceries - we’re about to get married, live in France. Our families have been driving us crazy so we came here to get away from everything for a while before the wedding.” He looks a bit sheepish. “Nat came up with it. Sometimes she gets a bit carried away with this stuff. The authorities won’t be looking for a couple, they’ll be looking for us as a group, or one on one, so we think it’s best if no one knows that the rest of you are here.”

“Loki and I are far too recognizable,” Thor says.

“And people may know me here,” Wanda says. “Before all this, I heard from an old friend in Poland that I’d become a bit infamous in the region.”

“Right. We’re pretty isolated out here, but if any of the neighbors come calling, Natasha and I will take care of it. Same with going into town for supplies. Rations will be stretched a bit thin for a while, since we have to be seen as buying for two, but we’ve got a plan to pick up more from several surrounding towns over the next few days. This is what I wanted to show you.” They reach the barn and Steve wrenches the old door open. It squeals. “Have to fix that. Here.” He shows them inside the barn, which is coated in a thick layer of dust. There is straw strewn across the barn floor. Steve sweeps some of it aside to reveal a door. He opens it, and drops a ladder down to a cellar.

“You’re expecting us to _hide_ ourselves in there?” Loki says, following his line of thought. He’s moderately horrified by the thought of crawling into the space. “I could use magic. Make us invisible.”

“We think it’s possible they’ve developed ways of detecting magic, given the tech on the Raft. It’s not necessarily likely that the local cops out here will _have_ that kind of tech…but it’s possible. Eastern Europe got pretty suspicious of magic and ‘Enhanced Individuals’ after Sokovia. I think it’s safest if we hide out the old fashioned way.” Loki looks to Thor, who shrugs.

“It’s undignified,” Loki says.

“It’s roomier than you’d think. You can try it out-”

“No.” Loki says sharply. “No, not now.”

Thor touches his elbow. “Perhaps another time.”

Steve nods. “‘Course. You’re welcome to take a look around if you want.” Loki drifts off, wandering on the edge of the barn. He runs his hands along the wood planks, feeling the grain of the wood against the pads of his fingers. He’s struck again by how quiet this place is. It feels on the edge of the world, tucked away from the whole of the universe. He indulges in the sunshine, the breeze on his face.

“…sure?”

“Yes, I would know.”

“I just want to make sure he wasn’t injured, that they didn’t _do_ anything. That he’s not hiding something-”

“I do not believe so.”

“We just need to know what we’re dealing with, Thor…” Thor and ‘Captain America’. Steve. The two of them, whispering about him when they think he cannot hear. Because they believe him too fragile to hear it.

“You might have just asked me.” Loki says as he steps around the corner. Thor has the good graces to look sheepish. “I am uninjured. They did nothing to me, which was the problem, I suppose. Just left me down there.” He rubs absentmindedly at his arm.

Thor takes a deep breath. “You are right, brother,” He says. “I should have spoken plainly with you. We both should have.”

Steve nods in agreement. “We didn’t want to pressure you. Are you at all hurt?”

Loki shakes his head. “No. There were some aches, but they’re gone now. I am fine.”

“I have another question.” Steve hesitates.

“Out with it, Captain.”

“Just Steve. Did they…do you know if they did any experiments?”

Loki tilts his head. “Experiments?”

“Did they take blood-”

“Yes. At the start, they took blood. And a couple times after.”

“Mine too,” Thor says.

“And they…rubbed things?”

Steve frowns. “Rubbed things?”

“Yes, like…sticks. In my mouth.”

Understanding - and relief - dawns on Steve’s face. “DNA. Right. That was it? No blackouts? No times where they sedated you, no odd wounds.”

Loki shakes his head. “I do not think so.” He glances at Thor, who shrugs.

“Good, okay,” Steve says. “There are things they could do with the blood and DNA, I guess, but…it could be a lot worse.” He looks haunted. Loki does not want to ask how it could be worse.

“There are spells one could do, with blood, but I doubt Midgard has the sorcerers to do so.”

“Or the scientific minds to work out what to do with our DNA. I’m sure it’s fine. Loki? Do you want something to eat?” Thor’s clearly trying to change the subject. He doesn’t want Loki to _dwell_.

“No,” Loki says quietly. “I would like to be alone for a while.” He sits in the grass and watches the wind move the branches in the trees, and thinks about how many years it has been since he has been able to do this.  
       

Two days later, Sam and Steve are sitting at the kitchen table when Thor joins them, early for the first time.

“Loki’s still sleeping,” He says. He doesn’t really have to. Loki has been sleeping far more than he’s been awake in the past couple days. Sam tries to assure them that it was normal, but they didn’t seem to quite believe him. “But I’m starting to get a bit restless.”

“We’re almost out of firewood, if you’d like to help out.”

Thor grins. “I would very much like to help with that.”

Loki appears in the kitchen about half an hour after Steve and Thor’s departure. “Where is my brother?” He asks, clearly trying to mask the nerves in his voice.

Sam tries to give him a reassuring smile. “He and Steve went out to chop firewood,” He says. “So it’s not so damn cold in here.”

“Oh.”

“Do you want to sit?” Loki doesn’t respond verbally, but hesitantly sits on the bench. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Loki says quickly. “I’m fine, it is no concern of yours.”

“I know, I just want you to know you can talk to me, if you need someone. Other than your brother, of course.”

“Why should I…”

“I have some experience helping people after…troubling experiences. Nothing like what you went through, but I know it can be helpful to talk.”

“Talk about what?”

“How it felt, how you’re feeling now. Anything.” Loki doesn’t answer. “Let’s start with something important: did they hurt you at all?”

“No.”

“You were not injured, or physically hurt-”

“Steve already asked us that.” Sam shrugs. After another moment’s hesitation, Loki continues. “Sometimes.” He swallows. “Sometimes, it did hurt but I believe it was unintentional. Absentminded, if anything. It was…because they did not think of me as a person who could feel pain; merely a beast to be confined.”

“That’s what you believe Ross thinks?”

Loki nods. “He believes people like us to be threats, so any damage is justified. But, from the way he spoke to me, I think he is not that far gone. The jailers did not even think me human, so they did not care. Asgard was not…dissimilar.”

“Really?”

“The prisons in Asgard were similarly bright. And alone. The guards barely spoke to prisoners, except to bring food. Though, I will confess we were far more gentle. I’ve never seen a prisoner bound like I was. The cells were fairly large and there were beds and I sometimes saw my mother and had books.”

“You’ve seen the inside of a few prison cells in the last few years, haven’t you?”

Loki grins, and it doesn’t quite make it to his eyes. “Why of course,” He says. “I’m a villain, aren’t I?”

“What about the other guy? Big and purple? The one you tried to warn Stark about? Natasha snagged a copy of your statement to Stark when she hacked the Raft’s files.”

The smile drops rapidly from his face and his hands spasm on the table. “The Mad Titan.” His voice is flat.

Sam proceeds gently. “You were imprisoned by him for a while? Twice now, right? How does that compare?”

Loki shudders, violently. “No,” He says very quietly. “No, it was…no where near as…” Loki’s eyes are getting that shining, distant look and Sam deliberately stays very still. If Loki wants to continue, he will. If he wants to stop, he can. After another shudder, he shakes his head. “The Raft was nothing compared to Sanctuary.”

“Why?” Sam asks.

“Thanos had…” Loki takes a deep breath. “I spent much of my time with him in pain, he made sure of it. Said it…it made me stronger. Cured me of…sentiment. He tormented me, took me apart and put me back together. My mind was…was _shredded_ like thin paper. I still sometimes,” He drops his voice low. “I still am sometimes unsure of which parts of my mind are my own. What memories have been _shaped_ by him. I spent centuries, constructing perfect shields on my mind. I was so good, I could block _anyone_ from my mind. I could hide myself even from Heimdall’s sight. Centuries of work, destroyed in months. Painfully.” He shakes his head. “The men on the Raft - I don’t know their names - they left me alone. It hurt, yes, it was…uncomfortable and it drove me mad but…it was nothing compared to Thanos.” Loki looks directly at Sam now. He doesn’t seem to notice as a tear drips down his cheek. “And if Thanos gets his way, he will bend the universe to his will through pain and death, like he did my mind.

“You know,” Loki grins, but the smile is more a grimace. “I still don’t know how much of New York was me and how much was Thanos. There were parts of it…I feel as though I remember thinking little of Earth long before my fall. And now I feel such a hatred for this realm and I cannot tell, if that is truly me, if that is the arrogance bred by the supremacy of Asgard in the Nine Realms, mixed with the hurt I feel at what humans have done to my brother and myself, or if that’s still Thanos, driving me forward, pushing me towards destruction.” His breath hitches and the grin falls off his face. He wipes away the tear. “I apologize, I don’t know why I am telling you this.” He rises. “It was foolish. You probably think-”

“I don’t think anything,” Sam says. “That’s what you feel. I’m here to listen, not to judge.” Loki freezes, looking at him with confusion plain on his face. Suspicion, almost. “I’ve been working with guys who come back from the war for a few years now. Sometimes they say terrible things. Sometimes, yeah, that means they’re dangerous. But most of the time, they just have to say it and have someone hear it. We’re not going to lock you up again, not unless you actually _do_ something to hurt someone - or yourself. Got it? If you need to just talk, you can talk. Coffee?” Sam gestures to the carafe. “You’re welcome to a cup now, or if you want to go back upstairs, and wait until Thor gets back, I’ll save you some.” Loki hesitates a moment more, then gingerly sits back at the table.

“I can stay.” Sam pours him a mug. He lets silence fall between them as Loki slowly drinks from his mug and the tension bleeds out of his body. After a little while, Loki speaks again. “I do not remember you. How did you end up…involved in all this?”

Sam smiles. “It’s a long story. But I think we’ve got time. So I was out for a run, and this asshole keeps passing me…”  
   

“Do we have a plan?” Thor asks as the axe swings down. The log splits with a _crack_.

“A plan?” Steve brushes the wood aside.

“I’m under no delusions that we can stay like this forever,” Thor says. “Or even for very long. How much have you have to move around, to avoid detection? How long could you spend in any one place?”

“Few weeks here, few weeks there. Sometimes a month or so, sometimes quicker if we felt like we might be compromised.”

“So we have a month, at most? We should have a plan for where to go next, for what to do about Thanos-”

“I know,” Steve says. “We found copies of your statements in the Raft files; we understand how pressing Thanos is. But he’s far away still. And we took as many precautions as possible to make sure we weren’t followed, to maximize our time here. You can rest. Recover.” Thor glances towards the house, hoping that Loki has not woken.

“I suppose you’re right. I cannot help but look for the future. To plan for our safety.” He sighs. “We’re not far from Norway, I could contact Astrid-”

“Are you sure the Norwegians would be willing to help?” Steve asks, in a way that suggests he doubts it.

Thor sighs. “I think they would.”

“Thor, even if they would, it would be a big risk. To them, as much as us.”

Thor thinks on this for a moment. “I suppose you’re right,” he says. “From the documents she gave me, I understand there were some consequences for their decision not to sign the Accords. If they were also found to be harboring fugitives…”

“Don’t worry,” Steve says. “We’ve got backup plans on backup plans. We’ve been doing this a long time now, we know what we’re doing.” Thor feels weary, unused to being the one left out of control. “It was a good thought, though. They’re, out of everyone, probably the least likely to screw us over.”

“Perhaps when things settle, I’ll reach out. Just in case,” Thor says, thinking of his father’s last wish.

“Sure,” Steve says. “When things settle.”  
   

And things do settle, into something resembling a routine. Steve and Natasha take care of fetching groceries and firewood and checking the news in town. There is nothing about their escape on the news, but there wouldn’t be, given the reluctance to discuss the Raft. Four days into their repose in Lithuania, there is a vague report of ‘new information being brought to light’ and a renewed call for the public to be on the lookout. They’re still using an old picture of Steve and Natasha’s barely looks anything like her. The news story makes them a bit nervous but no one says anything when they next go to town for food. It’s a wonder what a little facial hair, speaking a different language, and sheer confidence can do for a disguise.

At the farm, Sam and Wanda take care of cooking the food Steve and Natasha buy. Wanda wishes she could contact Vision, who surely knows about this breakout and that she was behind it. She wonders what he will say, what he thinks of her involvement. She also watches, fascinated by the little displays of magic surrounding the two Asgardians. Thor’s magic is far more raw, less precise. Wanda watches one night during a late fall storm, as Thor stands outside in the midst of the tempest, seeming to soak up the power. Loki uses it for little things, conjuring lights and calling objects to him. When Sam asks Loki if it’s alright that he be doing magic like that, after everything that happened, he simply smiles, and says, “Of course. My powers have been fully restored. The benefits of being imprisoned for months. That, at least, is back to normal.” There are still dark circles under his eyes, and a ghostly paleness to his face. Wanda slowly builds up the resolve to talk to him about magic.

Loki does not sleep through the night. He’s still unsteady in the dark, especially the complete blackness of the countryside. With no urban glow, their little farmhouse is pitch black, only the stars and the moon to provide any illumination. Loki wakes often at night, unaware of where he is. It takes a long time to remember their escape, and calm himself. Sometimes when he wakes he thinks they are on Sanctuary, other times the Raft, and on the rarest occasion he believes them to be on the Ark. And then he wants to weep, mourning for a time he never thought he would miss. But he feels a deep ache, a desire to return to that time where they were at least surrounded by their people, and the forged-by-fire camaraderie of the ‘Revengers.’

Once, and only once, he wakes and he believes them to be on Asgard. He gets halfway through kicking Thor out of his bed, telling him to go sleep in his own room, before he remembers. He sits bolt upright, recklessly calling a witchlight to his hands to illuminate the shock and hurt on Thor’s face. He cries as he explains and doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night, lying in Thor’s arms and thinking about how it had all gone so wrong.

On one of their shopping trips, Natasha brings back thick, heavy curtains and they agree that it is safe enough to keep a faint light on in their bedroom overnight. It’s just a little lantern, not enough to truly see by but it helps jog his memory more quickly. He settles back to sleep faster now.

This too is a routine. Thor stays with him in the dark, getting infrequent bouts of sleep in between soothing Loki, then when light dawns and Loki settles into a deeper slumber, he leaves him tucked in bed, and goes to help with the day to day operation of the household. He and Steve chop firewood as the days grow shorter and the nights colder, he helps clean dishes and make sure Loki is eating. When one of the pipes burst, he helps Steve and Sam put it all back together, to avoid calling a workman and bringing a stranger into their midst. Loki usually rises around mid-afternoon for a few hours of wakefulness. In the evenings, they all sit by the fire in the living room and tell stories or play games. Thor even catches a smile from his brother when Sam teaches them all a card game called ‘bullshit’ which Loki easily wins and thoroughly enjoys. They try to teach them Asgardian games but they have neither the proper equipment or the patience. With their extended lifespans, some Asgardian games can last for years, and they don’t have that kind of time.

They should be strategizing, Thor thinks. Sometimes when he is alone, doing the kind of menial work needed to keep the house running, his mind drifts to Heimdall, the Valkyrie, and his people. And Thanos. But he feels too exhausted to truly dwell to much on what should be done to stop the Titan. He tries to start spinning a plan one morning as he lies in bed, but is quickly overwhelmed by a feeling of deep fatigue. He falls back asleep and sleeps almost as long as Loki that day.

Two weeks go by like this. Loki begins eventually to sleep less, and more steadily. Thor can start to think of plans for the future without weariness tugging on his bones. No one comes for them. No one interrupts their solitude.  
   

In the early morning light, Loki slips out from under Thor’s arm and quietly treads out of the house. He has no real purpose to going outside - he just wanted to feel the sun on his skin, soak in the dew of the grass, feel the breeze on his face.

He lays on his back, closing his eyes, and soaking in the peacefulness of the morning, until he feels a tentative brush of magic against his mind. Foreign magic, _not_ his brother’s storm-blown power.

“Don’t do that,” He says, without opening his eyes. After the initial shock, he’d recognized the signature of the energy. Over the past two weeks, he’d felt it a couple of times. It was always hesitant, shy, and felt uncontrolled. He realized quickly it had been her, and wondered what she wanted. She never approached him, so he in turn said nothing. “Wanda. So it's true. _You_ must be the witch.”

“I didn’t mean to disturb you.” She says.

“You’re not. I certainly don’t mind company, especially not after five months of solitary confinement.” He sits up. She’s hovering several feet away from him, looking nervous. “What I do mind is your attempt to enter my mind. That’s very rude, you know.”

She hesitantly sits on the grass, a little closer to him. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“You are the one who showed my brother the vision of Hel and the Infinity Stones, yes?”

“He told you about that?”

“Yes. A while ago. Hm. Quite rude.” He sits back on his hands and shuts his eyes, turning his face towards the sun.

“Rude?”

“Yes, to invade someone’s mind without permission.”

“I…didn’t think. I just do it automatically. It makes me nervous to not know what people are thinking.”

“I understand the impulse, little witch, and I’ve given into it before, but also know that I won’t take kindly to someone prying things from my mind. There has been entirely too much of that lately.” She doesn’t respond to that. They fall into silence and she does not attempt to read his mind again.

“May I ask you a question?” She says after a while.

Loki sighs. “Alright.”

“Did you _learn_ magic?”

Loki blinks his eyes open in surprise. “Of course.”

“Who taught you?”

“My mother, mostly. Though she would occasionally send me to other tutors who specialized in other forms. For a well-rounded education.”

“No one’s ever…I’ve never known anyone else who could do this. I didn’t know it could be taught.”

“ _Really?_ ” She nods. “That explains why it’s so frayed at the edges. It’s not like mine, _made_ like that through damage, but because you never learned to control it. Fascinating. This kind of magic is tricky to contain at the best of times and if you’ve never even made the effort, never even _known_ to make the effort…”

“Frayed…?”

“Yes. You can’t…you can’t feel the edge of your magic?”

“I’ve never…thought to try.”

“Give me your hands.” Loki sits up and holds out his own hands. She hesitates a moment more and he can see curiosity warring with suspicion on her face. “I’ll just show you what the magic feels like. I won’t do anything else.” She puts her hands in his and closes her eyes. He does the same.

“Take a deep breath,” He says. “And really see.” In their shared minds’ eye, with him guiding her, the lights of their powers loom large. Hers is a deep scarlet, wafting in mists at a wide diameter from her body. Loki’s deep green seidr is tighter to his form, but the edges of it are sharp and jagged, like shattered glass. “You see? How far your power spreads, how tendrils of it reach far beyond your control.”

“What happened to yours?” There’s horror in her voice.

“Too much. The Titan, mostly. But…during my imprisonment…”

“I understand,” She says, too quickly, and in the echoes of power they share, he knows she has felt the same. “Is fraying power…dangerous?”

“Not necessarily, but it makes it harder to control. Makes it harder to conserve energy for when you really need it. You have a lot of raw power, but I’m guessing that you tire easily? Expend your magic quickly in large, short term workings?” He probes the edges further. “With permission, I’d like to go a little deeper.”

“Alright.”

There’s just something so _odd_ about her magic. He takes a deep breath and falls silent as he meditates on her power, what was wrong with it.  
   

The gray light of morning is filtering through their thin curtains when Thor wakes to the sound of the door gently shutting. Loki must have woken and slipped out. He thinks for a moment about rising and following, but he is still tired and perhaps Loki deserved some time alone, without him anxiously hovering over him. He falls slowly back into a peaceful sleep. He dreams of drifting in the stars when suddenly the dream changes.

He is on Knowhere and it is burning.

Corpses lie strewn about the mining colony, and a too familiar purple light lingers around the edges of the fires. Thor’s head pulses in pain, but he walks forward. The Collector’s domain has been ravaged. The man himself is limp, crushed and Thanos stands among the wreckage, holding a woman with green skin and red hair fast to his chest. She is crying, as is the man standing before her, who holds a gun pointed to her chest.

“I’m going to blow that nutsack of a chin right off your face.”

“Not him. Peter. You promised, you _promised_.”

“Oh, daughter. You expect too much from him. She’s asked, hasn’t she? Do it.” Thanos pushes her forward, shoving her towards the other man, the one she had called Peter. She cries out. “Do it!” Thanos roars.

Tears are threatening to spill over from Peter’s eyes. “I told you to go right.”

“I love you, more than anything.”

“I love you too.” They brace for the end.

He pulls the trigger-

Bubbles drift up from the barrel, and the weapon vanishes. A glowing blue portal opens behind Thanos and he pulls the woman back with him. Before the portal closes and Knowhere dissolves in scarlet, Thor sees three stones sparkling in the gauntlet when last there had only been one. The man, now alone on Knowhere, collapses to his knees.

Thor wakes up to sunlight streaming in through the curtains and his heart pounding. It takes him a long time to calm down from the adrenaline of the vision. He dresses and heads to find the others.

He finds Steve leaning on the door-frame, warily watching where his brother and Wanda are talking in the grass.

“Everything alright?” He asks.

Steve starts a little at his entrance. “Yeah, fine,” He responds. “Magic just, you know…” He gestures at the two. “It’s kinda weird.”

“I apologize, for bringing more magic into your life,” Thor half-jokes.

“I mean, it’s not like I was living a particularly _normal_ life before.” Steve glances at him. “Is something wrong? You look spooked.”

Thor sighs. “I have these dreams,” He says. “Of the future. I think. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. It’s getting easier.”

“…oh. And you had one?”

Thor nods. “From many, many miles away. Thanos has - or soon will - take another stone. Reality, this time.”

“That’s not good.”

“He can bend matter to his own will. With Power,” Thor shudders at the memory of the Power Stone boring into his head. “And Space, he is halfway to gaining all six. There is just the one remaining out in the cosmos - Soul - before he turns his attention to Earth.” Steve rubs his beard. “We’re that much closer to the universe’s doom.”  
   

Loki gasps when he finds it. The Mind Stone, at the core of her power. The scepter. In the moment of shock, in the echo of pain from the scepter’s influence, he’s dragged along deeper and he feels where her magic has been shorn - no, not her magic, her soul has been shorn away. It’s trauma so deep and painful it steals Loki’s breath and makes him want to scream with rage and _grief_.

He abruptly lets go of her hands and breaks the connection, breathing heavily.

She watches him warily. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t…think so. I just…” His heart is beating very fast. He wants to retreat, he wants to return to the safety of his room. “There’s a lot of pain in you. Grief. But I can teach you, if you want, to not let your powers be so tangled up in it.”

She looks relieved. “Can you?”

“Yes. Not…not right now. But soon. I have to…” He gestures at the house, stepping away from her.

“What about your power?”

“Mine?”

“I felt…I don’t know.”

“No,” Loki says. “What is it? What did you feel?”

“I felt…something else. Like there were pieces of your power tied up with someone else’s.” Loki chuckles grimly. Ironic. He felt her in power the absence of another, the empty spaces where someone’s presence has been torn away, and she felt where his has become too muddled with another’s.

 _Did you really think there would be no consequences?_ A bitter voice inside of him admonished. _No lasting effects of what you and Thor have been doing the last five months?_ It had been a necessity, as far as he was concerned. He would have gone entirely mad if he had been left in the bowels of that awful place with nothing. Thor’s mind and magic in his had been the only comforts allowed him in that prison, but now that they were out…

He didn’t want to deal with this. He didn’t want to face the fact that they may have done something very foolish. Luckily, he doesn’t have to, as they are interrupted by Thor and Steve approaching.

“Breakfast’s almost ready,” Steve says. “Sam’s making pancakes.”

Thor stops him before he can follow. “Wait.”

“What is it, brother?”

Thor’s grave expression frightens him a little. “I had a dream. Thanos has taken Knowhere. The Reality Stone…he has it.” Loki has gone very still, processing this news. Thor further describes his vision.

“Gamora.” 

“What?”

“The woman in your dream. That was Gamora, his daughter. The one who defected. I heard that she had been looking for the Soul Stone. If she did find it, and he has her back, it is only a matter of time before he gets the location out of her. And then he will come here.” Thor touches Loki’s elbow.

“It’s okay.”

Loki wrenches himself out of Thor’s grip. “Leave me alone,” He snaps, immediately regretting it. Thor just looks sad, hurt at his outburst. A part of him wants to throw himself into Thor’s arms, to take shelter there, but the other half of him loathes the thought of anyone touching him. He takes two steps away from his brother and folds his arms over his chest. Thor does not move towards him. “He is coming.”

Thor nods. “I know. I am afraid too.” Loki manages to take a deep breath.

“Hey, aliens!” Sam is standing in the doorway, holding a frying pan. “You want pancakes or what?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, this chapter got away from me. I maybe should have split it in two, but I couldn't find a good place to split it and, as you all know from me being super focused on posting the whumptober prompts in their exact order, once I decide on a structure...I get weirdly committed to it. The interlude has two chapters, the quiet, peaceful recovery....and the next chapter, where we orient ourselves back towards the action. 
> 
> It's possible the next chapter won't be ready to go up next Sunday. Sorry! It's not...quite done yet, and then there will almost definitely be a little bit of a gap before posting Part II. But! A consolation, I have another story in this series that I'm planning to post on Friday! So, keep an eye out for that. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading! I'm sorry I didn't have time this week to respond to comments, but thank you so much to everyone who commented! <3


	5. Interlude: Fear in These Walls; or Lithuania Seems a Nice Place to Rest (2/2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The time of rest and recovery is coming to a close. They turn their attention back to the bigger threat and begin to realize the scope of the problem.

After breakfast, Loki retreats to their room and Thor lets him. He checks on him once and finds him curled up, asleep. Thor drapes a blanket over him and leaves him alone. Loki reemerges for dinner, filled with a sudden purposeful energy none of them dare comment on.

They assemble following the meal in the living room. Loki paces before the hearth.

“We must find a way to contact the Valkyrie,” He finally says as he paces. “That was what we were doing before all of this _mess_ , we have to-”

“Brother,” Thor says patiently. “I understand.”

“If you _understood_ , then you would feel as desperate as I do to move against Thanos.” He twists his fingers together, that old familiar nervous gesture.

“Loki…” Unconsciously, Thor sends a wave a calm through the magical connection between them, as he had many times while they were aboard the Raft.

“Stop it!” Loki snaps. In the next moment, Loki’s expression turns guilty and his manic energy fades a little. He does not stop twisting his hands together. “Sorry,” He says. “I just think, if Thanos has three Stones _and_ Gamora…”

“How do you know Thor’s dream was something that really happened?” Sam asks. “Nightmares are very common, post-trauma, and-” Loki blinks.

“It’s not a nightmare. Thor is a seer.” There is a moment of dead silence.

“A seer...” Sam says. “What?”

“Thor is a seer. He has dreams of the future.”

“It’s true,” He confirms. “Our mother was a seer.”

“And this never came up? You never thought to mention you could see the future?” Steve asks.

Thor shrugs. “I’m not very good at it.” They all stare at him, aghast.

“Stark had a similar reaction. You really never mentioned it?” Loki asks Thor, sounding a bit amused despite the stress.

“It never came up!” He insists. Tony had learned of this particular ability during one of their several arguments in the Avengers facility. Thor had been begging him to listen about the Infinity Stones, reminding him of the vision Wanda had showed him. Tony had started pacing, scrubbing his mouth with a hand.

“And what if mine comes true? I saw all of us, dead, on some rock, in space. If yours is coming true, that means mine is too, right?”

“Unlikely,” Loki had said from the corner, the first time he had spoken in several minutes.

“What?” Tony asked.

“Yours is unlikely to be true, given that I doubt you possess the skills of a seer, like Thor does.”

“Okay, _what?_ ” It had been kind of funny, the expression on Tony’s face. Even now, the surprised looks on the others’ faces were also somewhat amusing. Even Loki’s mouth twitches into a small smile.

“Yes. Thor possesses the ability to see the _actual_ future, they’re not just dreams. And he is becoming…well, not _abysmal_ at telling the difference.”

“Thank you, brother, such high praise.” Loki gives him a look in response to his sarcasm.

“Okay, then, so you’re sure that this Gamora has been kidnapped by Thanos.” Thor nods. “And you’re sure she knew where the last stone was?” Sam asks.

“I can’t be certain, but clearly Thanos believes that she does, if he was so desperate to get her back.” Loki starts up pacing again. “The thing…the thing about Thanos is that he has one, singular goal. To obtain the Stones and obliterate half of all life in the universe. He believes it to be…to be a noble goal, to save the ones that remain by conserving and redistributing the resources that the dead would have consumed.”

“That’s disgusting,” Steve says. “We don’t…and that’s not how it works.”

“You cannot tell him that, he will not hear it. Nor will he hear reports of the worlds he’s done this to, how their societies collapse and splinter. But he will not be swayed from his plan. Certainly,” Loki clears his throat. “He is also a sadist. He punishes those who step out of line with immense suffering. Kills prisoners at random sometimes for no other reason than to avoid complacency. He tells himself it is in service of his goal, making sure that those around him are just as dedicated as he is, eliminating weakness in his ranks, but I’ve come to suspect he just…he just enjoys watching people dance at the end of the rope before him.”

Thor cannot look any more at his brother, remembering far too vividly the _precise_ ways Thanos made them dance. He takes a deep breath that stutters on the exhale and looks at his hands instead.

“Sounds kind of like cult recruitment to me,” Sam says. “Surrounding yourself with vulnerable people, break them down until you’re all that’s left and they have no way out, no other thought but whatever you put in their heads.” Wanda makes a small noise of horror in the corner. Loki twitches and when Thor looks back at him, he can see he’s trembling slightly.

“Loki, perhaps you should sit down…”

Loki ignores him. “Yes, Sam, I think that describes what he wants from his followers. And it’s resulted in a force that is devoted to him and his mission and willing to do anything to carry it out. They care not for anything in life but for Thanos. He calls them his Children, others call them the Black Order, and they are extremely dangerous and…creative. They are as devoted to finding the stones as he is. That’s why I was so surprised when Gamora appeared and told me she had escaped. And then Nebula too.”

“Perhaps that is another reason why he has started to move so quickly. Asgard was destroyed, so he knew he could take Space, and our forces would be weakened so could not oppose him. And if he is losing allies…”

Loki nods. “Yes, perhaps. Gamora’s defection will have struck him to the core, she was always…the jewel in his crown. Skilled, terrifying. He’d taken her as a child and raised her to be his assassin. He would have been sure of her loyalty. He will want to punish her for leaving him, of course. But the Stones are still paramount. Until his plan is carried out, especially now that it seems within his grasp, he’s diverting all his energies to gathering the stones. He captured us because the Tesseract, unprotected after Asgard burned, called to him. He kept us alive, tortured us, because he believed that either Thor or I could lead him to the next Stone. He could have just killed me for failing him, but I was worth more alive, to help him find the Mind Stone.” With a jolt, Thor realizes he had left something out of his confession to Loki their first day in Lithuania. He’d forgotten to tell him the fate of the Mind Stone. He glances sidelong at Steve, who seems too lost in thought to realize the direction the conversation’s heading. “Or to provide proper _incentive_ to force Thor to do it. Likewise, he would not have gone after Gamora unless it served his goal. He left her alone for three years, by her own report. Why would he lure her to Knowhere and capture her unless he believed she knew where the Soul Stone was?”

“You make a good point, brother. And I agree, I think we have to be ready for him to obtain the Soul Stone, and to fully turn his attention to Earth.”

“We’ll work on contacting a few people who might be our best hopes of mounting a defense from Earth,” Steve says. “I hesitate to contact Tony, but he’ll have to be told eventually.”

“He won’t listen,” Thor says. “I told him all of this. It was less immediate then, but we told him all.”

“He said we were mad.” Loki pauses by the fire, crossing his arms across his chest. “Even though, the evidence was near _carved_ onto our bodies.”

“Loki,” Thor says again softly. “Maybe you should come sit.”

“I am _fine_ ,” He starts pacing again. “That _insufferable_ sorcerer should be warned as well, though I have to admit he is doing a far better job protecting Time than you all were the Space Stone, or the Mind Stone. Wait.” Loki’s brow furrows. Ah, there it is. A glance at Steve reveals he’s finally followed the line of logic and nervously returns Thor’s gaze.

“Loki, come sit down-”

“Wait,” Loki stops his pacing. “Wait, in her magic, I felt…” He looks at Wanda, who has been quiet for most of the conversation. “Where is the Mind Stone?” Thor scrubs a hand through his hair. “You said it was safe, didn’t you? So where is it?”

“Loki, I can explain.”

“Explain what?” Loki glances around the room, taking a step back. “You all know something. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“It’s just…it’s just a little complicated,” Thor says. “I don’t know that I can explain all of it.”

“Then try.” Loki does _not_ sound pleased. Thor winces, but begins recounting what he had left out.

Loki has to sit by the end, perching on a stool by the fire and leaning against the wall.

“You put the Mind Stone in an android? That you just let roam the Earth?”

“We keep tabs.”

“Keep tabs,” Loki says faintly. “And it was animated by _your_ magic, brother?”

Thor winces. “Bruce and Tony did most of the work but…technically…”

“And if you think that’s crazy, Wanda’s dating him,” Sam says. The room is so silent one could hear a pin drop.

“Dating…the Mind Stone.” Loki sounds truly like he may faint now.

“Not the Mind Stone, Vision,” Wanda insists. “He’s more than that, more than just the stone.” Wanda glances around. “He is.”

“We know,” Natasha says. “We get it.” Sam awkwardly clears his throat.

“Despite being rather disturbing, given how much the Stone is tied up in your powers, perhaps we can use this to our advantage, to get him away from Stark,” Loki continues. “We need to find a way to make sure that he is protected. Away from Thanos’ sight.”

“Should be easy, since Tony’s letting him just wander the Earth-”

“He’s just been letting him _wander?_ ”

“We meet up, occasionally,” Wanda says. “He has never been followed by Stark’s people, or the government. We haven’t been caught yet.”

“That’s good for keeping us out of the Raft,” Thor says. “But it will be a severe weakness when Thanos turns his attention here.”

Steve looks at Natasha and they share a look that Thor cannot quite interpret. “You’re right. I think it’s time for us to get in gear.”

“ _How?_ ” Loki says, his voice ragged. “If no one will listen.”

“Some will,” Steve responds firmly. “We didn’t want to take the two of you directly there, but there is one government on Earth that will believe us and has enough power to make the rest at least listen.”

“And it will be safe?” Thor asks. Steve nods.

“They’re not going to be thrilled about us appearing there out of the blue, but they won’t turn you over to the Security Council,” Natasha says. “Do you think we can take…let’s say a week? So we can contact them and they can prepare.”

“It will be safer that way.” Thor is tempted to agree right away, tempted by Steve’s assurance of greater safety. (Oh how he had changed, and how the difference strikes him sometimes.) But he looks to Loki instead.

“What do you think?” Loki thinks for a moment.

“I believe we have the time. It will take time for Thanos to…” He twitches. “ _Extract_ the location of the Soul Stone from her. He will have to travel to obtain it, though that will be faster now that he has Space. He will have to defeat whatever defenses surround it. It will take some time. Not much, but I think we have a week.”

“Good,” Steve says. “We start the process tomorrow. We’ll have one more week out here to rest.”

“I’m going to miss this place,” Sam says. “It’s nice, it reminds me a bit of my uncle’s cabin. That was even more of a shit hole, every summer there would be a new thing to fix. But that was his thing, every summer, a new thing to fix. He loved it, you could tell even when he bitched about whatever pipe had burst or wood rot, that he loved every second of fixing that cabin. Had a stereo set up, would play the same few cassettes over and over again.”

“Let me guess,” Steve smiles. “ _Trouble Man?_ ”

“We went to camp once when we were children,” Wanda says. “We had to learn how to build fires, I was absolutely terrible at it.” As the conversation shifts from the dangerous predicament facing them, to the more mundane, personal stories that remind them all why they must save the universe, Thor inclines his head at Loki, still perched on the stool.

“Come sit,” He says quietly, nearly drowned out as Sam laughs at one of Steve’s stories. This time, Loki listens, comes to sit next to him on the couch.

“This is madness,” Loki whispers to him. “The Mind Stone, walking and _wandering_ , sentient, unprotected…”

“It was a mad time,” Thor agrees. “Cleaning up the remnants of the Chitauri invasion.” Loki’s frown deepens. “I scarcely remember how it all happened, it was so fast. But this is the reality of what we must face.” Thor nudges his shoulder. “But we have a week left to rest. Loki,” He raises his voice some. “You should tell them about the first time we went camping alone.”

“You mean the part where you were swept downstream and nearly eaten by a bear while trying to fish and insisted upon wrestling it,” He says with a small smile. “Or the part where we were nearly captured and _I_ , once again, had to save us.”

“I do want to hear this,” Natasha says. “It’s pretty wild to hear you be the one doing the saving.”

“Loki was always happy to do the saving,” Thor says. “ _If_ he could make the one he was saving look like a fool afterwards, of course.”

“I seem to recall that many of your early heroics, brother,” Loki grins. “Were purposefully conducted in full display of pretty girls who might be impressed with them.”

Despite the tension building in the air, the threat in the universe that grows closer, the evening slowly eases into their typical pleasantries, and when they retire to bed Thor feels like they might have things under control.  
   

In the morning, Steve rises early and goes for a long run around the edge of the property. On his fourth loop, Natasha is perched on the fence, sipping a cup of coffee.

“Morning, Cap,” She calls, too brightly.

“Morning, Nat.”

“Lot to think about, huh?”

Steve sighs. “You ready to start making for Wakanda?”

“Soon as I finish this,” Natasha lifts her mug. “I’ll hike to the jet, set up a call with T’Challa. You think they’re ready to face humans again?”

“I don’t know. I think they will be, or at least they’ll get through it.”

“I hadn’t really thought about what happened _before_ they landed on Earth.”

Steve runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, me neither. I know Sam was talking to Loki a bit, but he didn’t want to share everything, thought it would spook him if he found out that he’d talked behind his back. The whole isolation on the Raft is one thing, but whatever happened before…”

“Sounds like they were tortured pretty bad. And it will happen again, if Thanos gets his way. I think they’re ready to face us Earthlings if it will mean beating Thanos.”

Steve starts to pace. “Jesus, Nat, did you pick up on any of this? When Fury told you to interrogate Loki, back during New York?” Her mouth narrows to a thin line.

“No. Looking back…maybe I should have. Looking at him now, and what he looked like back then, maybe I should have seen the signs. But we didn’t know him before New York. And the brainwashing was complete enough to fool _Thor_ , who’d known him for a thousand years.” Natasha just shakes her head, looking out at the drive. “I just believed so much in the story SHIELD was telling us. We were the good guys, that was the bad guy. I didn’t even question it.”

“You know I didn’t either. It was so easy to take sides. Shoot the aliens, don’t ask what they’re here for. Beat down the wannabe dictator, don’t ask if someone’s pulling the strings.” He sighs. “Thanos was playing the long game, we were playing the short one. We made a mistake.”

“And we’re running out of time to fix it.” They are both silent for a moment.

“Alright. We tackle it one step at a time. We head for Wakanda-”

“Steve. Wait. Do you see that?” In the distance, three blurry figures are making their way up the road. They come into further focus, revealing a stocky man in a loose shirt and jacket and two police officers.

“Shit, _shit_ ,” Steve hisses.

“It’s okay, they wouldn’t just send two cops to take us in. It’s not Ross.”

“We still need to-”

“Go,” Nat says. “Get them into the barn, go!” Steve runs back to the house just as they neighbors start coming up the road with the cops. She heads out to meet them with a false smile and an easy wave. “ _Labas rytas!_ ”

Steve makes it to the farm in record time. Sam and Wanda are sitting at the kitchen table.

“We’ve got company! Barn, _now!_ ”

Thor is just coming down the stairs. “What’s going on?”

“The neighbor’s coming up the drive. With police.” Thor curses, and bolts half back up the stairs. Loki is already on his way down.

“Loki,” He reaches out his hand. Loki takes it and in a flash of green they are gone from the stairwell.

“Dammit, I said no magic.” He goes back out the front door in time to see the barn door sliding shut behind Sam and Wanda, and the spark of green signaling Thor and Loki’s arrival. He steps out of the house, just in time to greet Natasha and the strangers.  
   

Thor stumbles a bit on their landing in the barn, but recovers his footing in time to help Sam tear aside the door. He drops into the cellar and retrieves the ladder.

“Quickly!” He whispers, holding out his hand to help Wanda, then Sam down the ladder. Loki goes last and Thor does not let go of him until the door is shut and they’re lying, pressed together in the cellar. It’s a tight fit, and dim. Dust is thick in the air. Loki waves a hand and through the cracks, he sees straw moving back into place. He twists his fingers and the edges of the door disappear, the hinges and knob vanishing.

“Just a little magic,” Loki whispers. Thor gives him a faint smile in return. There’s the sound of the barn door squeaking open.

“We’ll just take a look around, see if there’s any evidence of anyone hiding out here,” An accented voice says.

“Like we said, we haven’t been out here since we arrived two weeks ago. It’s possible. And how much did you say was stolen?”

“Not much, just some equipment. It is probably just teenagers, but we can never be too careful.” Thor’s heart seems to be beating so loudly he is sure they can hear it. He tries to calm himself, but his own anxiety is fueled by the equal stress he feels through his bond with Loki. His brother presses his hand against his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut. At his back, Sam alone is held together in calm. Wanda trembles like a leaf on Sam’s other side.

“It doesn’t look like anything’s disturbed,” One of the strange voices says.

“I don’t think anything’s missing,” Steve says. “And we haven’t noticed anything.”

“How long did you say you would be in town?”

“We have the place from my uncle’s friend for a month, at least,” Natasha says. “Maybe longer, depending on how mad my mother is being.”

The stranger chuckles. “I thought my wife was going to murder my mother in law before we got married.” Boots cross directly over their door and stop. Loki shudders, his breath coming faster. Thor wraps his arms around him, pressing his hand over Loki’s on his mouth. He holds him close, and still, as the footsteps move over them.

“You’ve been good neighbors,” Another accented voice says. “I barely realized you were here.”

“We didn’t want to disturb,” Steve says.

“And I’m sure you were quite busy, eh?” The first stranger laughs. “Are you _sure_ I don’t know you?”

There is unmistakable tension in Steve’s voice. “This is my first time in Lithuania. So unless you’ve ever been to Paris…”

“Hm, I’ve been, but it was many, many years ago. A school trip.”

“Of course.”

“Perhaps-”

“New York? I went to college in New York.” Steve’s voice wavers.

“No, that’s not…Ah. Perhaps I will think of it later.” The footsteps move again.

“This is a good place.” There’s the sound of a knock on wood. Loki jerks in Thor’s arms. “Solid construction. You should suggest they get the farm going again, would be nice to have neighbors. I don’t know about all this ecotourism stuff, but it might make things worthwhile, yes?”

“I’ll pass the advice along,” Natasha says. “It’s been a lovely getaway, I’m sure they would do well on AirBnB.”

“Ah, but then there will be young people and drinking, you sure you want that, Matis?” The footsteps fade, as do the voices. The door squeaks shut again and there is silence.

They all relax, going limp against the dirt floor.

“Thank God,” Wanda whispers.

“We wait for them to come back and get us,” Sam reminds them. “They could still come back.”

“Brother?” Thor breathes. “Are you alright?” Loki nods tightly, not taking his hand off his mouth. “You’re okay.” Thor rubs his arm, hopefully soothingly. His hand trembles.

After almost ten minutes of being cramped in the tight space, Steve returns for them. Loki releases his small bit of magic that hides their door, and he pulls it open.

“The neighbor’s missing some farm equipment,” Steve says as he offers them a hand up. “He called the cops. Thinks it some local kids, that they might have stashed it, or hid out here.”

“They’re gone now?” Sam asks.

Steve nods. “We don’t think they suspected anything but…”

“He recognized you,” Wanda says.

“Maybe he was mistaking me for someone else. Maybe. Or, yes, maybe he recognized me and he will remember later.”

“Shit.”

“It’s time to go. We need to be ready to go by nightfall, forget about taking a week. They won’t like us dropping in this fast, but there’s nothing to be done about that. Don’t worry. We just need to get to the quinjet, we’ll be able to get out under their radars.” Loki has said nothing, just standing to one side. Thor keeps him in the corner of his vision.

“Sunset’s in five hours,” Sam says. “We need to scrub this place. Let’s go.”

Loki doesn’t move as the others go to return to the house. “They’re going to find us,” Loki says. “Damn, _damn_ , we need to run. We should just go-” He hisses.

Thor grasps his arms. “It’s alright, brother,” He says. “You’re alright.”

Loki looks at him imploringly. “We should just leave them-”

“Yes, you _could_ use your magic to get us out of here, but how long do you think we’ll last on our own? A week? And then we’ll be right back where we started. We need to stay with them, as long as possible. They know this planet, far better than us. They’re our best shot.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Loki replies, looking away.

“Trust me,” Thor says softly, cupping his neck. “I won’t let them take us again.” A spark travels across the knuckles of his other hand, a promise. Loki finally nods and follows him back to the house, which has been thrown into chaos by this intrusion.

Their peaceful space is gone and they’re moving again.

The threat of discovery and recapture, the frenetic energy as they pack and ready to leave has left Loki tense and keyed up. He snaps at Thor over the next few hours, ignoring the others’ existence entirely. As the sun begins to set, he calms a bit. Thor feels its safe enough to approach him without getting bit.

“We cannot stay here,” Loki says, folding his arm across his chest.

“Of course not, that’s why we’ve been packing the last few hours, brother. What did you think we were doing?” Thor says with false brightness. He knows what Loki is referring to, of course, but does not want to face having this argument again.

“You have such loyalty to this world,” He responds after a pause. “For what? The affections of a few? Thousand year old prayers? What is the _point_ of all of it?” Thor says nothing in return. “We cannot stay here long. They will hunt us, and all like us, for centuries. If, _if_ , the rest of Asgard is still out there somewhere, do you really think we could keep them safe here? When we cannot even hide ourselves, in the middle of nowhere, for more than three weeks?”

“You’re right,” Thor says. “I know you’re right. But…there are many things to consider.” He sighs. “Alright. Let’s think about this. Where do you propose we go?”

“We throw ourselves on the mercy of the Vanir. Yes, you will have to give up any pretensions to a throne, we will have to do whatever they wish of us, but it is our best option. If we can ever find a way off this rock.”

“I understand your point, Loki. But,” Loki’s head snaps to him and Thor gears up for a fight, but his brother merely tenses and waits for him to finish. “I do not think we should do anything, until we deal with Thanos.” Loki twitches and looks away. “Earth is the safest place for us right now, and the best defense against Thanos. If we flee before he is defeated, there may not be a corner of the Universe for us to hide from his wrath. And remember, we spent a year and a half traveling on the Ark. Were any of the planets we visited truly any better than Earth? We cannot flee blindly. The Vanir may not accept us, we are too great a threat to their own throne. What if we run from Earth and only to end up imprisoned by the Vanir? Or at the mercy of a strange planet that might likewise bind us or enslave us? Or somewhere like Sakaar?” Loki shivers, looking out at the gathering darkness. He hunches closer in on himself. “Once we end Thanos, we will talk about where we will go from there. I promise. But Earth - for all it’s faults, for all it has done - is the safest place for us, for now. Do you understand?” Loki nods. Thor places a hand on the center of Loki’s back, gratified when Loki doesn’t flinch away. He rubs a small circle. “We’ll be alright. We’ve made it this far.”

“Barely,” Loki says so quietly Thor almost doesn’t catch it. But he minutely leans into Thor’s touch and the debate has burnt itself out once again.

 

Several miles away, Officer David Zukas is sitting down to dinner. His children are watching TV, some cartoon, but his oldest - a teenager now - sits on her computer, watching some American music video. He can just barely hear the music through her headphones but before he can tell her to turn it down, the image on the screen sweeps over the New York skyline.

“You know,” He says to his wife, as she sets down glasses full of water. “There was this fellow today, I swear I recognized him. But he lived in Paris, said he went to college in America, I can’t seem to…” _Place him_. He doesn’t finish the sentence because in the moment he says it, it clicks together in his mind. “Sorry, dear,” He rises from his place at the table. “I have to make a phone call.”

 

They are packed and ready only thirty minutes after sundown. Natasha hikes early to the jet to begin readying it for their departure. It is agreed that Steve, Thor, and Loki will go first, and Sam and Wanda will follow, to spread out their travels through the forest, reduce the risk of detection.

“Okay,” Steve says. “Let’s move while we still have some light left.” Thor has the urge to grab Loki’s hand, to make sure he can keep him close, but he must carry their bags and Loki must conjure a light, so he suffices with keeping his brother in sight, following close by.

They are so, so close to their goal when Steve holds up a hand to stop them.

“Wait,” Steve says, putting up an arm. “Do you hear that?” The unmistakable sound of helicopter blades.

“We’re out of time.” Thor says, drawing level with Steve.

“We can still make it out without a fight,” Steve says. “If we’re careful. Come on!” Thor shoves Loki in front of him and they make it to the jet.

“We’ve got four helicopters,” Natasha calls out. “Their call signs seem like they’re regional authorities so far, a couple feds. Probably haven’t had time to bring in the big guns.”

“Mask us,” Steve orders.

“Done, we’re off radar and shields are up.”

“Sam and Wanda will be trapped,” Loki says quietly.

“Had they left yet?” Thor asks.

Steve checks his watch. “Probably just barely,” Steve responds. “Shit.”

Natasha brings up the radar screen. “It seems like the choppers have stopped on the edge of the property. They’ll have the SWAT teams disembark, work closer to the house. They’re hoping to catch us by surprise.”

“Okay,” Steve says, scrubbing at his beard. “We can wait, ten minutes, then we’ll have to figure out some way to engage, maybe if we cloak the jet and take a wide approach-”

“We might not be able to wait ten minutes, if they’ve summoned UN troops. We could be dealing with more by the time we figure out what to do. We need to move fast.”

“Is there any water?” Loki says, startling them. “Two bottles, that should be enough, and somewhere I could pour them-”

“Yes!” Thor says. “Yes, of course.”

“Bottles of water are in the fourth cabinet,” Steve fetches the bottles, Thor finds a plastic container. Loki empties the bottles into the container, grips it tightly, and closes his eyes. Green sparks light up the still water and the image of Sam and Wanda, crouched by the fence surrounding the property, comes to the water. They are talking, though the vision has no sound, looking over their shoulders. Bobbing lights from flashlights bounce around the trees.

“I could hear what they were saying,” Loki says. “Though that will take more magic, and I hesitate to use too much-”

“No, no, that’s good.” Steve lets out the air in his lungs in a great sigh. “Okay, so they’re cut off.”

“Our options are,” Natasha says, ticking them off on her fingers. “One, wait and see if they can hide long enough to make it, two, engage directly and trust that we can out-power them.”

“I want to avoid that, as long as possible,” Steve cuts in.

“I agree,” Thor says. “I think it will simply give them further excuse to attack us in future. If there is a way to do this without provoking-”

“I will go.” Loki releases the vision and stands. Thor’s heart sinks into his stomach. “I know you disapprove of the use of magic, but if they already know that we are here, so it no longer matters. I can use magic to retrieve them.”

“Loki-”

“It’s _fine_ ,” Loki snaps. “If we run into problems, you will know, won’t you? It is the simplest solution, and the one that will get us out of here the quickest.” Thor hesitates for a long moment. Selfishly, he wants to refuse, to demand that Loki not leave his sight, but he also cannot justify abandoning Wanda and Sam to arrest and the Raft.

“Fine.”

“We’ll be ready to fly,” Natasha says. “If you’re not back in five minutes, we’re going to take off and try to rout them.” Loki nods.

“And you will get back to the jet, by any means you can.” Thor grasps his arms, squeezing.

“I will be quick.”

“You will _not_ take any unnecessary risks, brother.”

“Of course not, Thor. I promise, five minutes.” He steps out of Thor’s grip and in a flash of green light, vanishes from the quinjet.

 

And reappears in the forest, next to Sam and Wanda. He drops to his knees quickly, ducking behind the fence they’re hiding behind.

“Shit!” Sam hisses. “What the-”

“I apologize for startling you,” Loki says. “But it seemed expedient, if you just take my hands…” But when he holds them out and gathers his magic to make the return journey, something feels wrong.

Wanda watches his face. “So you’ve noticed,” She says, holding out her hand. Her scarlet magic stutters and sparks in her hand, almost staticky in quality. “They’ve got things to block it, or disrupt it-”

“Perhaps your magic,” Loki says. “But they can’t fully block mine. It will just be…more complicated. It will take more effort.” He takes a steadying breath. “I _can_ do it.” He says it half to reassure himself. The flashlights are growing closer, and in the distance he can hear dogs barking. His pulse thrums in his ears and he must force his breath to even.

“Are you certain?” Wanda says.

“Yeah, I don’t want to end up like, in a bunch of pieces or inside of a tree or something.” There’s a voice shouting, carried on the wind.

“I am _not_ certain, but what choice do we have? They are coming and I am not intending on going back to the Raft, are you?” Wanda’s face is drawn in the dim light. She takes his hand. Sam grasps the other, and Loki _forces_ his magic past the odd clouds around it, focuses on the jet, and draws them in.

They land in a crumpled pile, two hundred yards short of their goal.

“Damn,” Loki gasps. “ _Damn_ it.” Sam grabs him, pulling him up.

“Come on, we need to go!”

“Stop! Stop there!” There’s a light blinding them, mounted on an assault rifle. “Hands up!” The soldier seems surprised at their appearance and grapples for his radio. Loki is there faster, knocking it from his hands and disarming him in a smooth movement. An elbow to the face sends him sprawling back, but there’s another, a bullet flying past his ear.

“Shit, I guess we’re going to engage now,” Sam says as he takes down one soldier. “Try not to-”

“Kill them? I’ll do my best.” Loki conjures a knife, but instead of driving it into the soldier’s throat as he would do normally, he slashes at his knuckles and makes him drop his weapon.

As the fight goes on, he mentally counts down the five minutes he had agreed upon with Thor. Just as he is going to reach out with a bit of magic and warn them, he hears a cry from behind him.

Wanda, her red magic still sputtering and uncontrollable, is knocked back by the third black suited soldier who attacks her. She falls back and regains her footing, readying to lunge again, when one she had already struck gets back up. He hits her behind the knees with a baton and as she falls the other aims his gun at Wanda’s head. Loki takes a deep breath, calling upon the deep reserves of magic a thousand years of training and practice have granted him. He calls the green fire to his hands, tugging her out of the way and drawing on it to attack. He has to push harder against their odd blocks, but then-

Something gives way inside of him. A dam releases. Beyond his control, power flows through him, overtaking his body and flowing out of him.

Sparking like lightning.

It strikes out at the soldiers, surging electric magic. Loki thinks he might scream, but he can’t be sure, too overwhelmed by the power and disconnected from his form to truly know.

 

Thor pauses in programming the navigation on the quinjet. Something is tugging at the core of his power.

“Thor? What is it?” Steve asks. “We have to finish-”

“I have to go.”

“Thor wait-” Steve follows him to the entrance of the jet, leaving Natasha at the controls. “We can’t just rush off, if we’re all taken-”

“Something is _wrong_ , I can feel it.”

“Feel it _how?_ Thor?” The feeling of something pulling on his power intensifies and it floods out of him, into someone else. In his mind, Loki’s screaming, overwhelmed, drowning. Thor stops at the jet’s entrance and takes a deep breath. _Loki_ , he pushes with his mind. _Loki, STOP_. The drain stops slowly, the power flow trickling down to a light stream before it stops, leaving Thor feeling fatigued, faint. There’s nerves, and deep down some frantic panic, but Thor can _feel_ a familiar hand on his arm, dragging him up and moving him closer.

Back in the jet, Steve is calling his name.

“It’s fine,” He says. “They’re fine. They’re coming”

“Thor, what the _hell?_ ”

“I’ll explain later, just get us ready to go!”

 

The power threatens to burn the entire forest. The entire country, if Loki’s not careful. He can’t control it, the raw lightning slipping out of his control, tearing through him. He falls to his knees. Red magic tries to contain the flow but the seidr - the _combined_ seidr obliterates it. It’s not until a clear voice rings in his mind - _Loki STOP_ \- that he can take a full breath and fight to control it. The sparking green lightning slowly retreats, and he closes the connection that had let him draw on his brother’s power in the first place. The retreat leaves him panting, on his hands and knees, struggling to get his breathing under control.

“Shit,” Sam breathes.

“Loki?” Wanda tentatively approaches him, hand out and sparking with red. The panic draws on his magic - just his own this time - and pushes her back. She cries out in surprise.

“It’s okay,” He gasps around the panic. “I’m sorry, but just… _do not touch me_.”

“Loki, we have to go,” Sam says. “They weren’t alone, there going to be more coming.”

When Loki doesn’t respond, still focusing on trying to get himself under control, Wanda tries to take a step forward. She meets an invisible barrier. “Loki, come on, I don’t know what to do.” His heart is beating too fast, he can’t move, can’t draw on his magic by his own will, what has he _done?_

“I didn’t mean to kill them,” He gasps. “I remembered what you said, I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s okay. I know. I don’t think they’re dead, I think most are just knocked out-”

“-I couldn’t control it, I-”

“It’s _okay_. But Loki, we’ve got to run.” Sam approaches this time, Wanda keeping her distance, and Loki forcibly manages to stuff the panic down. He staggers to his feet. The magic barrier dissolves at his command and his seidr obediently retreats to his core. It’s under his control again, for now. He takes a deep breath. Sam grasps his arm and his grip is steadying.

“Let’s go.” They run the rest of the way to the jet, where Steve is hovering and Thor is waiting on the gangway. They help them up and Natasha hits the control to the door and they’re taking off. Thor’s hands tremble where they grip Loki’s arms and the look at his face tells Loki he knows what he has done.

“I’m sorry-”

“It’s alright.” He sits Loki on the bench. Loki buries his face in his hands, still breathing heavily.

“I’m sorry,” He moans. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

Thor rests his hand on Loki’s bowed head. “It’s alright, brother. It will be alright.”

He knew it had been a mistake. He knew he had _ruined_ his and his brother’s magic by mingling them together in the prison. He hadn’t wanted to face it, like a child, and now they were left with the consequences. He can feel Wanda’s gaze on him, silent and judging, he’s sure.

He tucks himself into the side of the aircraft, keeps his face in his hands, and speaks to no one.

 

The trip is, for the first few hours, silent and tense. Loki slowly drifts off to sleep on one bench, Sam and Wanda on the other. Thor covers his brother with a blanket and heads up to the cockpit, where Steve and Natasha are piloting them to their next destination.

“Everything okay?” Natasha asks, studying him intently. Thor sighs.

“It will be, I’m sure. Or perhaps I’m just being hopeful. But we’ll get through it. We’ve gotten through everything else.” He watches the darkness for a moment. “Where are we going this time?” He asks.

“It’s called Wakanda,” Steve answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we're headed for Wakanda and they've got another problem to work out before they can tackle Thanos. I just can't make things easy for them, can I? But Thor's right - as complicated as Earth is right now, things are unlikely to be better elsewhere. He's not forgiving, and definitely not forgetting, but I think he sees the advantages of staying on Earth over risking the unknown. 
> 
> Also, this fic is just so many long conversations. That's all it's turned into, my goodness. 
> 
> But next time, we'll return more to the wider world and see what's been going on with some other characters. The Interludes were meant to be self-contained, which is why we stayed on them in Lithuania. But we'll get back to the others! 
> 
> Thank you for your patience! As you can see my posting schedule is pretty much straight out the window, so I'm not quite as regular as I once was. My plan is to, much like when I was posting Part I, completely finish the next part before posting, so it will return to a regular schedule then! It might be a while because I have...very little actually written oops. And I have a couple smaller projects I'd like to finish and post, but I'm really hoping to get this completely out [and start posting a bit of the next in the series ;-)] before _Endgame_ is released. 
> 
> Follow me on tumblr for general updates/progress/etc etc : bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com


	6. Part II: Preparations; or, Guests in the Kingdom of Wakanda (1/3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Cap arrives in Wakanda. Alliances and plans are made in the fight against Thanos. 
> 
> War is coming and it's time to get ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Coming in just under my self-imposed deadline. 
> 
> As we're moving into the final third of this section of the series, I want to stress the 'Not (quite) a Fix it' tag. Just a heads up. Obviously, it's a fix it for a major early plot point of _Infinity War_ but just...fyi. It's not (quite) entirely a fix it. (Eventually, things will be resolved. Hopefully in a satisfying way. But just...you'll have to trust me ha.) 
> 
> Also, second fyi, if you skipped the oneshots I posted, you may want to go back and read ['like prey'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17866313), as a character refers to those events in this chapter. Not the most necessary, it's context more than anything, but just in case anyone was confused.
> 
> Enjoy!

“Holy shit,” Rocket says, reading the signal of the ship that was pulling into Xairot behind them. “Quill, I think I’m seeing a ghost.”

“A ghost?” Peter says. “What the hell are you talking about, Rocket?” He’s slumped in the captain’s chair, subdued, as he had been since Knowhere.

“That call sign…isn’t it the same as that wreck we came across? That distress call and when we got there, just that exploded ship, and all those bodies…nothing good to steal neither.”

“I think he is right,” Mantis looks over his shoulder. “Or perhaps it is just a coincidence.”

“You think there were survivors? Who fled before we arrived?” Drax asks.

“They might have known what it was they were running from, and wisely made haste to escape it.” Mantis folds her hands together and frowns.

“Still think it was Thanos?” Rocket asks.

“Gamora thought it was Thanos. She said it was something that he would do. It makes as much sense as anything else.” Something like hope blooms in Peter’s eyes. “If it _was_ Thanos that destroyed their ship and they got a new one…maybe they know something. Maybe they can get us closer.” _To finding Gamora._

“Uh huh,” Rocket frowns.

“Yes,” Drax says. “Yes, they could lead us to Thanos. What are we waiting for?”

“I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Drax. Seems like it’s a long-shot.” Rocket dismisses. Peter just shakes his head and goes to get his jacket.

When Rocket thinks he’s is out of earshot, he drops his voice low. “You know how Quill gets with these things. He wants to find her so bad, he wants to believe it’s all Thanos. Remember that lead we took from that Nova Corp dude? Wild goose chase. It’s probably just a stolen call sign, crooks hiding their identity.”

Peter takes a deep breath and shrugs on his jacket. “Mantis, stay here and watch Groot,” He says. “Make sure he doesn’t completely wreck the ship.”

“I will do my best!”

They scope things out before approaching, watching the ship. People come and go, carrying supplies and crates of food. A woman emerges from the hull. She’s twirling an empty bottle between her fingers and wearing a short blue cape.

“Shit, I _know_ her,” Peter says. It takes him a moment but then he places it. “Yes! Remember that time the Ravagers attacked a group of travelers for a bounty? At the Kovi Market? She was with them.”

“That was when the Ravagers took a bounty from Thanos?” Peter nods. “Alright, Quill, you might be onto something here.” Rocket takes up the binoculars. “They don’t look armed.”

“Stay here. I’m going to go talk to her.” Before either of them can stop him, Peter gets to his feet and sidles down the embankment to the loading dock. He can hear the other two scrambling after him and waves them off. “Hey!” The woman on the gangway snaps her attention to him. She turns and Peter can see the edge of a long sword, clamped to her hip. “‘Doesn’t look armed,’ my ass,” He mutters to himself. He was going to kill Rocket.

A very tall man with an even more massive sword strapped to his back descends down the plank.

“Hey, folks. Don’t mean any harm.” He raises his hands. “Just want to talk.”

The woman raises an eyebrow. “Is there a problem?”

“Nope, nope, no problem,” He says. “I’m just looking for a guy named Thanos. And I think you might be too. At least, you have the same call sign as a ship we came across, few months back, that had the marks of Thanos’s dirty work.”

The woman squints at him for another moment, sizing him up. “Alright,” She says finally. “Not here. Follow me.”

They show him to the cramped silver cockpit of the ship. As he passes, he can see that the passengers are civilians, normal people, mostly unarmed by the looks of it. They look curiously at him as they pass but say nothing.

“We can talk privately here,” She sits in the captain’s chair. “I don’t want the people to hear us talking about Thanos. They’ve been through enough.”

“Fair ‘nough,” Peter says. “We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Peter Quill. Now, I don’t know your name…but I’ve actually seen you before.” He tells her of his relation to Gamora, what he had seen the day they had beaten back the Ravagers. Her expression remains blank.

“So where is your assassin friend now?” She asks when he’s finished.

“She was taken by Thanos.”

“Is she dead?”

Peter has to look away, studying the control array instead of looking her in the eye. “No, no, I don’t think so. Thanos…he wanted her alive.”

“Sucks for her then,” She says, sounding bitter. “Thanos has taken people from me too, but at least I’m fairly certain he killed them.”

“Fairly certain?”

“You were the one who said you came across the wreckage. Did you find any bodies?”

Peter winces. “Good point.”

“Were there…” She clears her voice. “Two in particular. A blond, missing an eye. One with long black hair-” But Peter’s already shaking his head.

“We didn’t look through the bodies, once we’d figured out no one’d survived.”

She sighs, rising from her chair. “So it’s still uncertain then. They could still be alive, I guess.” The tall man with the giant sword enters. “He doesn’t know if they’re dead or not. So that’s a bust. They are still beyond your watch?”

“I cannot see them, neither among the living nor the dead. Their fate remains clouded to me.”

“I still think they’re dead.” The woman goes to the window, looking out over the port.

“Sorry I can’t be more help. But if we find Thanos, we’ll know for certain, and I can-”

“You can lead us to Thanos?” She asks, turning back to him.

“We’ve been looking, haven’t found him yet. But if we work together…”

“It’s as good a chance as any, my lady.”

“Well, Peter Quill, it seems like we’re in business.” She smiles. “My name is Brunnhilde, if you call me that I’ll kill you. I was once a Valkyrie in the service of Odin, King of Asgard, and now they call me the Queen of the Dead. Don’t call me that either. I will also kill you. Just Valkyrie. This is Heimdall, the Watcher. You’re standing in what remains of the realm of Asgard.” Her smile widens, grows feral. “And we’re going to hunt a Titan.”

 

“You have to have something, Stark! Some way of tracking down-”

“Mr. Secretary, with all _due_ respect,” Ross rolls his eyes. “I’m not an investigator. I’m not a detective.”

“Something technological then,” Ross growls.

Tony thinks about the ease of tracing a phone call through cell towers. He would just have to make the call, set up the trace and wait. Steve had probably tried to block a trace on the cell, but Tony doubts he’d be able to block out Stark tech. He’d adapted remarkably well to modern life and tech but he was still born in 1918.

“Nope. Not yet. I thought you all would have learned the first time that Rogers broke into your super secret prison, but I guess I’m the one doing all the work around here.” Ross turns an impressive shade of purple.

“I’ll ask you again, Stark. Did Thor have any contact with any unauthorized individual while on assignment with you?” Tony had thoroughly deleted all evidence of the time Thor met Steve in the woods, out of guilt more than anything. He hadn’t really meant for things to go that far, for Thor at least. He was just trying to protect what he had left. And he hadn’t realized Ross had failed to patch the holes in the Raft that let Steve in in the first place. He’d figured letting Thor talk to Steve, see his side, wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Maybe it would help him _understand_ what Tony was fighting for.

It didn’t. It just helped him escape.

Tony was trying to get up some moral outrage over the whole thing, or even some fear. He just feels burnt out instead, and irritated with Ross’s constant demands for enhanced technology. So, in short, not particularly cooperative.

“Not that I saw. I don’t know, Secretary, call me if you find them. Otherwise, I can’t help you.”

“ _Dammit_ Stark,” And the sound of something shattering. “This concerns you too. Don’t come crying to me when you’ve got two angry gods coming out for your ass, along with all the assassins and deserters already on your goddamn tail!”

“Well, they’ll have to get in line. I got about seventy death threats in the mail this week. Four hundred marriage proposals, but the death threats still sting.” He leans against the desk and crosses his arms. “Look, I don’t know what you want from me. They haven’t turned up in weeks, I can’t track ghosts. For all we know, they’re not even on Earth anymore.”

“I don’t think they’ve left. I think they’re still here, and they’re all preparing for something. You’re not going to be ready, Stark. You know as well as I do, for everyone’s safety, they have to be _contained_.”

Tony sighs and kills the connection. The hologram vanishes. He keeps staring at the spot where Ross disappeared.

“You’re really not worried about them wanting revenge?” Rhodes asks from behind him.

Tony shrugs. “They’re probably pretty pissed, but I’ve pissed off a lot of people.”

“Tony, you seem surprisingly flippant about all of this, for someone who was real insistent on locking them up in the first place.” Tony picks up a spare part from the desk and tosses it between his hands.

“What Ross said, about them preparing for something…” He turns to face his friend. “I don’t think they’re preparing to attack us. Or the government, or whatever. If they wanted to do that, they would have already. It’s not like I’ve been particularly careful about security.”

“Something I have consistently told you is _bad_.”

“Right, but I think they’re preparing for something. I think they’re preparing for that,” He gestures upwards, at the sky. “Maybe something is coming. And maybe,” He drops his voice. “It’s not the worst thing to have them working on a plan for the next cosmic crazy to come rain down destruction on our little blue planet. While we,” He gestures between them with the spare part. “Make sure that the superpowered ones down here can’t do more damage.”

“If that’s the case, Tony,” Rhodes also keeps his voice low. “You have to realize those might be kind of messed up priorities. If we’re keeping them on their toes, keeping them fugitives, _they_ don’t have the resources to deal with the big threats. And they’re in the perfect position to disrupt social structures, governments - do damage - before we can find them and stop them.”

“I’ll give you the second point, but they’ve been this quiet for this long, I don’t think they’re really in the game of tearing apart democracies. And you really don’t think they don’t have people helping them? People who might have technological resources even we can’t compete with?”

“What? Your Wakanda theory again? That’s ridiculous, King T’Challa was the first supporter of the Accords.”

“But don’t you think he’s been acting kind of odd since then?”

“Wakanda’s always acted like this. They’ve always been private, secretive. They just want to protect their people and their resources.”

“And I’m just saying, it’s not out of left field for them to also be protecting some superpowered refugees.”

“Why don’t you share any of this with Ross?”

“I did, a while ago. I think he’s filed them away, but like everyone else he underestimates the Wakandans. He just keeps surveilling Norway and completely ignoring my advice on fixing the Raft security. And you’re wrong.”

“Wrong about what, Tony?”

“I have my priorities straight.” He puts the part down on the desk and sighs. “I do. Pepper, you, the kid in Queens. The human inhabitants of this planet. They’re my priority.”

“I hope you’re right, Tony. I really hope this doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass.”

Rhodes heads back to DC in the morning. Several nights later, Tony has just finished dressing for a fundraising dinner when he comes across Vision in the kitchen, stirring a stew.

“You’re…cooking? You don’t even eat?”

“I enjoy learning new skills,” Vision says. “Even if I cannot immediately reap the benefits. I am planning on trying _baking_ next. Some articles on the internet seem to suggest someone like me might be better at baking, as it is more of a science than the art that is cooking.”

“I never really got the hang of either. Not enough time. I make pretty good eggs though.” Vision used to cook for Wanda. Tony can only assume that this cooking experimentation is practice for the next time they meet up. Vision doesn’t know that Tony knows about this and he’s not about to let on. Not yet. But something is bothering him.

“Hey, Vision?”

“Yes?”

“You know that,” He clears his throat. “You know that I support you going off on those little adventures, right?”

“Of course. You said you wanted me to experience the beauties of this world, if I am going to protect it.”

“I just want to make sure…you’re being careful, right?”

“Careful?”

“I just don’t want…” Tony sighs. “You know,” He waves a hand. “There are things out there that might come after you. And I wouldn’t want to see you…”

“Of course.” His expression is blank, but then again, as an android he is not prone to wearing his heart on his sleeve.

“Just be careful.”

“Obviously. Besides,” Vision smiles. “I do believe the threat would have to be _exceptional_ to take me on.”

“Sure thing,” Tony returns the smile.

“Smells great, Vision,” Pepper says as she enters with Happy. She turns her gaze to Tony. “You. Are you ready?”

Tony does a little twirl. “Do I not look ready?”

“Do you have the tickets?”

“Yup.”

“Did you call the driver?”

“Were you not planning on flying? Or bicycles? I thought bicycles-”

“Tony…”

“Yes, driver called, check signed. I am _ready_. What are you up to tonight, Happy?”

“Well, I think I’m going to be eating some soup.”

“Yes, he has graciously agreed to be my taste tester.”

“Excellent, if you move on to chocolate chip cookies, make sure you save me some.”

“Have fun at the dinner, you two!” Happy waves them off. “You know, I think we should set you up with a Youtube channel…”

“Come on, Tony, we’ll be late.” Pepper tucks her hair behind her ear and firmly takes his arm. “I know you like to make an entrance, but if we can just have one night with minimal dramatics, I will be a happy woman.”

With the soft weight of her hand on his arm, Tony thinks back to his conversation with Rhodes. He does have his priorities straight. He hasn’t heard from Bruce in a while, but perhaps that’s for the best. He sets aside the doubts, and the guilt, and walks out into the evening.

 

That same night, many miles away, a quinjet is traveling through the night after a hasty departure from Lithuania.

The flight through the dark skies proceeds uneventfully. Even if the quinjet’s technology hadn’t smoothed out the flight, it would have been peaceful and without turbulence. Inside the jet, all is quiet as well, each passenger dozing or lost in thought as they travel south.

“We’ll be hitting the barrier in an hour,” Natasha says. “You should go wake them. We’ll need to clean ourselves up a bit. I’ll keep at the controls.”

“Thanks, Nat.” Steve rises from the copilot seat to wake the passengers.

In the cabin, even Thor’s dropped off to a doze, easily roused by a touch to the shoulder.

“Up and at ‘em, guys,” Steve says, stirring the others.

“Where are we?” Loki says as soon as he wakes. He sounds tense, with the edge of nerves in his voice.

“Two hours from the border of Wakanda,” Steve replies.

“Yes, this Wakanda,” Thor says. “It’s curious, I don’t recall hearing much about Wakanda when I was here before.”

“They’ve been pretty quiet up ’til now,” Sam says. “Kept themselves hidden until very recently.”

“They’ve been instrumental in helping us. Probably the only reason we’ve lasted as long as we have. But they’re still in the world, and they have to protect their position. They’re going to be unhappy that we’re just showing up like this, out of the blue. Usually we plan these things a bit better.”

“Nothing to be done about that,” Thor says quietly.

“They’re going to be our best bet at mounting a defense. But since we didn’t get a chance to contact them and explain everything, we’ll have to catch them up.”

“I thought we sent information before we went into the Raft?” Wanda asks.

“We did, transferred most of the files we skimmed in Rota. But we haven’t had a chance to explain what else we’ve learned in Lithuania.”

“So we must explain about Thanos again,” Loki says, not looking at him. His voice is flat but his gaze is distant and haunted and Steve feels a pang of sympathy.

“Yes. You will have to present yourselves and your case, filling in the details missing from the original statements.”

Thor sighs at Steve’s words. He sounds even more exhausted than Loki. “Alright, then. What more can you tell us about this country?” Thor asks. Within a few minutes, they fill the Asgardians in on all they can about the structure and personalities of Wakanda. There are holes, as even they don’t have all the answers to the intricacies of the Wakandan government and society - and Steve purposefully leaves out some information of a more personal nature - but they get the gist.

“We’ll meet with King T’Challa as soon as we arrive. He’ll need to meet you before officially approving your stay, but don’t worry,” Steve quickly moves to reassure at their suddenly guarded expressions. “They _had_ approved your stay before, before we even went into the RAFT. This is just a formality. It’s moving up the timeline. We’d hoped to stay longer in Lithuania, get some of the trail off us, but…”

“Shit happens,” Sam finishes.

“We’re doing the best we can.” Steve smiles crookedly, but Thor still does not look entirely certain.

“Fine. We’ll need to compose ourselves, I expect,” Thor sighs. Loki has been quiet, sitting on the bench. Now, his eyes focus he raises his hands and makes a gesture before his chest. And pulls a cape from thin air. “Ah.”

“Well, that’s impressive,” Sam says.

“More comfortable than an illusion.” He tosses the scarlet cape to Thor.

“I was wondering where this went,” Thor remarks, studying the cape. It has an intricate bit of stitch work at the hem. Thor runs his thumb over the stitches. “I thought I lost it on the Ark.”

“No,” Loki says simply. “I stole it. You’re welcome.” Though there’s still an underlying tension around his eyes and a slight tremor to his hands, he gives Thor a small smile. “I thought to prepare us for a hasty departure, should our time on the Ark end sooner than expected. I didn’t get the chance to retrieve it when Thanos took us, and we haven’t needed Asgardian clothes until now.” He conjures a full set of clothes for each of them and they take turns stepping back to change from the plain pants and sweaters to clothes more in the style they’ve worn before. It’s not the heavy armor they had donned during the battle of New York, but cloth and leather stitched in similar patterns.

“What else do you have stashed in there?” Sam asks.

Loki shrugs. “Odds and ends, mostly.”

A deeply noncommittal answer. Steve exchanges a skeptical look with Sam but neither of them say a thing. The last thing Loki pulls from the depths of his magical pocket is a deep emerald cape, which he slings around his own soldiers. He sits on the edge of the bench and blindly begins to pin back his hair.

“Wakanda is pretty technologically advanced,” Steve explains. “Once we hit the barrier, we’ll be completely cloaked. And they’re the best bet we have to start getting out defenses together.”

“For Thanos,” Thor says, and sounds tired again. It’s like every mention of him wears Thor down a little more at a time. Steve has not yet heard the full accounting of what happened to them before they arrived on Earth, only piecing a fuzzy image together from the insinuations from the conversation in Lithuania. He’s not sure he wants to hear the full story.

“Yes.”

Thor nods, and rises. “I will go take the controls from Natasha.” They all quietly watch him go, Loki with an odd expression on his face. Steve busies himself with storing some of the things they’d pulled out in their rush to find the containers and the blankets during their hasty departure.

“Odds and ends?” Steve hears Wanda ask.

“Yes. It is where I held the Tesseract, until it was taken from me,” Loki says. “There are some personal things I’d hidden from Asgard, items that would be useful in an emergency, as you’ve seen. There are some books…wait. Here.” Out of the corner of his eye, Steve watches Loki conjure a thick volume. “I know I promised to teach you something of magic, but after…I think I have some of my own problems to solve before I can begin any practical lessons. A book will have to do for now.”

“…are you sure? This seems…old. What if I damage it?”

“Yes, it’s probably around 800 years old. But Asgard produces things with far more durability than Earth. It’s unlikely that you would harm it. Just _do_ try not to lose it, it has some…sentimental value. And tell me if there are sections you cannot read, translation spells have never been my strong point.”

Steve is unsure how he feels about all of this, so he leaves Wanda and Loki to talk and goes to find Thor in the cockpit.

“You are certain,” Thor says quietly. “That these people can be trusted.”

“I’m trusting them with something more important than my own life,” Steve replies. “So, yes. I swear, they’re not going to betray us.”

“If they do, know that I will do whatever it takes to keep my brother safe.” Thor’s voice is low, grave. Dressed up in all that regalia, with the scarlet cape and black eye patch, Thor looks stern and powerful. Like a king. It’s clear he means business.

“I know. Trust me. I know. It’s a long story, I’ll catch you up later, but just…” Steve sighs. “Trust me.”

“And you know I barely trust anybody,” Natasha says from the pilot’s seat. “If you need to go, I’ll help you find an escape route. We’re hitting the barrier in 10.”

They’re hailed when they’re in range of the Wakandan border. Natasha reads out their call sign and sends the text of their passenger manifest. There’s a tense minute of radio silence, but the crackling voice returns. “Proceed to landing area. The king will be waiting for you.”

“Well then,” Steve says. “Let’s get ready to land.”

 

Thor is jittery with nerves as the jet lowers towards the landing pad. The city below them is lit with soft blue and purple lights, and all seems peaceful. But he cannot help feeling like they are walking into an ambush. Loki beside him appears unfazed, though Thor knows it to be a mask. He can feel it as well, the anxiety radiating off of him, and thinks about the implication of these feelings. How entwined their souls had become. The trouble seems distant now, the connection harmless, but he cannot forget the feeling of Loki’s magic tugging on his own. It had felt wild and dangerous. It is a problem they must fix.

But they had to get past this Midgardian court first.

Thor was not looking forward to this audience. He was practiced, certainly, they both were, at navigating these sorts of traditional introductions. But the royal courts they had visited on their travels on the Ark had more often turned out to be more perilous than not, and his current experiences with Earth governments have been rather abysmal. He allows just a small spark to travel across the palm of his hand, a soothing reminder of the power he holds within him.

Loki’s nervously fiddling with the hem of his tunic. Thor fusses at his cape, shaking out a wrinkle so it drapes more evenly.

“Stop it,” Loki says, though without venom and he doesn’t move away.

“It was bunching at the shoulder.” He is briefly horrified at how much he sounds like their mother, nitpicking at their clothes before most formal events throughout their childhoods. “It will be alright, Loki.”

“Yes.”

“Steve assures me they’re to be trusted. They won’t hurt us.” Loki remains very, very still, eyes focused ahead. Thor lowers his voice. “You are recovered from the jump with the Tesseract now, yes? If needed, we can teleport to safety?”

“If you are trying to soothe my nerves, brother, you are ruining the effect by asking me that. But yes. My powers are fully restored, thanks to that little _rest_ aboard the Raft.” Thor winces. “Where will we go?”

The constant question without answer. “I don’t know,” Thor admits. There are options; Norway, and he may even be desperate enough to seek out Jane or Selvig. But none of them will help them get any closer to reconnecting with Heimdall and the Valkyrie, and they cannot help them defeat Thanos. This is the only path forward.

The jet lands at the base of a glass tower and the door opens to reveal a section of scarlet clad guards.

“Welcome back, Captain Rogers,” One of them says. Her eyes travel over their group, lingering on Thor and Loki. “We weren’t expecting you so soon.”

“Sorry, Okoye.” Steve looks a little sheepish.

“Yeah, we got made,” Natasha says.

“Hm,” Okoye says. “Well, come with me, the king is waiting for you.”

“She’s a little stern at first,” Natasha whispers to Thor. “But she’ll warm up to you.” She and her several guards lead them to an elevator, which takes them to the top of the tower.

“I sense no blocks on my magic,” Loki whispers as they ascend. “I’ll be ready, if we need.” Thor finds his wrist and gives it a reassuring squeeze.

The king of Wakanda is alone in the throne room when they arrive, absorbed in reading something on a tablet. He sets it aside as they are shown in and dismisses the guards.

“Welcome to Wakanda,” He says. “And welcome back, Captain.” He rises and he and Steve shake hands. T’Challa’s stern expression breaks into a genuine smile.

“Thanks for having us on such short notice.”

“It is not a problem. You were not followed, but we’ll have the border guards on high alert for the rest of the night, just in case. Okoye was displeased, but Nakia and I managed to talk her down. Forgive me, I am being rude.” He turns his attention to Thor and extends a hand. “I’ve heard a great deal about you. Both of you, of course.”

Thor shakes his hand. “Unfortunately, I’ve heard nothing about you. The past hour has been quite the revelation.”

“We’ve tried to fill them in as best we could,” Steve says. “I’m sure they’ll have questions.”

“And you’re welcome to pose them, though you’ll understand if I cannot answer them all. And that I have questions of my own.”

“Of course,” Thor’s smile takes effort, but he makes it work. “I expect you want to hear about Thanos.”

T’Challa dismisses the others, Steve promises to check in on them afterwards. Then Thor starts talking. By the end, he has given a full accounting of what has been happening in the larger universe outside of the Earth’s solar system, and what he knows of Thanos’s plan and movements. He still skims a bit over the specifics of their time on Sanctuary. T’Challa, for his part, asks only a few follow up questions, mostly quietly listening. Then Thor fills him in on Tony Stark and the Raft, and ends with a brief summary of their escape.

“It has been quiet a busy few years,” T’Challa remarks when he’s done. “And much more complicated than I had expected. What are your plans?”

The feeling of deep exhaustion returns, but he forges on. He manages a smile. “We’re going to stop Thanos, of course. Revenge would perhaps be nice as well, if the Norns allow us the indulgence. And getting back to what’s left of our people. We were working on a way to contact them before our stay at the Avenger compound came to an abrupt end.”

“This is logical. You can hardly stay on Earth.”

Loki speaks up for the first time since the conversation began. “I expect most people see us both as criminals now, not just myself. I doubt they will not be able to look past that, even to stop Thanos.”

“That is, of course, a significant problem, in many people’s eyes.” T’Challa looks thoughtful, stern. “With your permission, I would like to speak to Loki alone.”

Thor answers without hesitation. “No.”

“I would give you my word, it would be a few minutes.”

“Thor, it’s alright-”

“No.” He does not look at Loki, keeps his eyes on T’Challa. “I am sorry, but no.” After a long moment, T’Challa nods. Thor thinks he might see something like understanding on the other king’s face.

“Fine. I have some questions about what happened in New York.” T’Challa poses his questions and Thor holds his tongue to allow Loki to answer for himself, with a veneer of composure. He speaks of his plans in New York and their thwarting - and their origins in Thanos’s own motivations and manipulations - with shocking calm, speaking of things that Thor did not know and would have glossed over, unable to face the horror. When they are done, however, Loki’s composure falters a little. His expression wavers a little, stabilizing when Thor quietly lays a hand on the small of his back.

T’Challa looks thoughtful. “Thank you for answering my questions. I will call a meeting in the morning so that we may all discuss objectives and strategies. But for now you should get some rest. I will have rooms prepared for you, and if you need anything at all, just let someone know.”

“Thank you, your majesty, for your hospitality.”

“Of course. And I am sorry, for the lack of hospitality shown elsewhere. To be honest, not that long ago, Wakanda might have reacted in a similar way, assuming the worst and restraining instead of listening.” T’Challa’s expression grows a little distant. “But we have changed, in many ways. For the better, I hope. Please, if we can do anything, let us know.”

 

Their audience concluded, they are released, to be shown to guest rooms. Thor anticipates that the Wakandans will try to give them separate quarters, so he heads them off by quietly speaking to one of the assistants. She shrugs but shows them to quarters and leave them alone. Loki sinks to the bed and starts to mechanically undo the buttons on his cape and tunic. Thor pokes around their room.

One full wall is a window, looking out onto the dark forest and the stars. The room is spacious, well furnished with smooth wood furniture, and tech he will have to figure out later. Instead he settles for figuring out the light switches and lowering the lamps to a pleasant, soft glow.

Loki has said nothing and barely looked at him since their meeting concluded.

“It seems like we’ve succeeded in convincing them of Thanos’s threat,” Thor says. “Though I suppose we’ll find out better in the morning.” Thor runs his hands over the smooth glass of the window. A display comes up and he is able to adjust the tint of the glass to block out the night sky. “Impressive. Their technology is fascinating, I cannot believe Earth has been containing this talent, all this time.”

“Hm,” Loki finally says. He rises from the bed, turning his back to Thor. He folds his cape methodically and sets it on the chair. He seems more tense than even before their meeting. Thor’s fears have started to dissipate in their solitude, but Loki’s seem to have grown in the interim.

“I hadn’t known,” Thor says. “What you said, about the tether. The mental connection between you and the Other and what he was able to do though it. During the battle.”

“I was gone for a year, Thor, I scarcely have the time to tell you everything.”

“I know. And I will not press you to tell me more than you are comfortable. I merely…it surprised me when you told T’Challa that. What knocked the connection loose?”

“I don’t know. I thought for a while it was the physical trauma from the Hulk’s beating, but I later read your report of the events, and believe it may have been the weapon Tony Stark deployed through the portal. Either way, once the battle was over, they never called me back, or caused me any pain. The connection was broken. I do not know why they did not renew it during our captivity.” Loki rises and goes to the window, looking out over the dimmed lights of the city.

“Loki,” Thor says to his brother’s back. “We have to talk about what happened.”

“What about what happened?” Loki’s voice is suddenly brittle and Thor almost backs off, but he knows they cannot keep ignoring this.

“Did you know? What we had done? That our magic would-”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Loki, we must, I felt it, you were using _my_ magic-”

“Stop. Stop, I _don’t_ want to talk about this.” Loki turns around, hands twisting together. There are tears brimming in his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He looks so grieved and Thor’s heart sinks. “Hasn’t everything _changed_ enough already, hasn’t enough been _ruined?_ ”

“Loki,” Thor says, pacifying. “I know. I know you’re hurting.”

A tear drips down his brother’s cheek. “I know we have to talk about this, I _know_ , but can we please, _please_ , just…not yet.”

“Okay,” He agrees. “Not yet. We cannot avoid it forever, but we can at least rest for tonight.” Loki relaxes a little.

“I just don’t want anything else to _change_.” He’s still not looking at him. “It’s just…everything’s gone. Everything. The only thing I had left is my magic, and if that’s…if that’s…” Thor goes to him, touching his shoulder lightly. When he doesn’t pull away, he wraps his arms securely around him. Loki presses close, hiding his face in the crook of Thor’s neck. He’s trembling, the strain of their flight from Lithuania, sharing their experience and warnings yet again, have taken their toll. Thor rubs slow circles on his back, taking his own comfort from the quiet care.

“What if I ruined it?” Loki whispers, half to himself. “ _Norns_ , what if I ruined it?” His breath hitches, and Thor holds him tighter, rocking slightly.   

“You didn’t ruin anything.” Loki makes a choked noise. “You didn’t ruin our magic. You protected yourself, it’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

“I’m-”

“Don’t. Don’t apologize. It wasn’t your fault.” Thor rests his hand on the back of Loki’s head.

“Mother would be so ashamed of me.”

“She wouldn’t. She would want you to survive, she would want you to do what you could to protect yourself.”

“It was her gift, she taught me magic and I just _ruined_ it.” Thor holds him tighter. Loki’s breath hitches. “I ruin everything. Norns, I destroy _everything_.”

“Shh. Not this. You didn’t ruin this. It’s just one problem to fix. We will get through this. All will be well soon.”

“I want this all to be _over_. I just want to rest,” Loki whispers, almost too quietly to hear.

“I know, little brother,” Thor whispers into his ear. He rests his head on Loki’s. His brother’s exhale comes out a sob. “Soon. It will be over soon.” Loki doesn’t pull away for a long time. Thor lets him quietly cry himself out in his arms without further comment.

 

T’Challa frowns faintly as he watches the feed from their guests’ room.

“Cut the cameras,” He instructs.

“Are you certain?” The agent is surprised. “But the threat-”

“It is alright. Cut the feed.” The agent complies and T’Challa retires to his quarters.

 

The night in Wakanda passes quietly.

At dawn the next morning, Steve hikes out across the grasslands. It’s about an hour walk to the little hut by the lake, but Steve could use the time to think. The lake is quiet, and the hut is empty when he arrives, so he perches on a rock and waits.

“Fancy seeing you here,” A familiar voice says after perhaps half an hour or so. Bucky’s walking up the path from the pastures. “Come to visit the goats?” Steve breaks into a wide smile.

“I thought it’d say hi to an old man first.”

“Old man,” Bucky shakes his head chuckling. “Who are you calling old?” He sits on the opposite rock. “How are things, out in the world?” Steve looks away, back to the lake. “That bad, huh?”

“The world just keeps getting crazier and crazier.” Steve sighs. “First few months were quiet. Then we had to break some friends out of the Raft-”

“Christ, Steve, again? You went to the Raft again?” Bucky shakes his head. “How’d you know they wouldn’t catch you?”

“We were careful.”

“Still, it was reckless.”

“Sure, but we needed to get them out. Buck,” He turns back to his friend. “There’s something coming. A fight we need to get ready for.”

“Of course there is,” Bucky says heavily. “There’s always another fight. How long do we have?”

“A while still. But it’s coming.” Steve fills him in on the bare bones details, then redirects the conversation to the goats, and the children, watching Bucky’s face relaxes and his countenance grows lighter as the conversation turns to the peaceful days of his life on the edge of the Wakandan capitol. Steve hates that he has to break up this peace and desperately wishes they could keep this peace. Maybe after this Thanos, it will be time to stop running, time to settle into a peaceful life.

Steve can’t even imagine it.

He spends awhile with Bucky, helping him feed the goats and play a game with the children that run down to the small farm before their classes begin. Then he starts back for the palace, for the meeting T’Challa had called. He reaches the wide balcony overlooking the plains, and is somewhat surprised to see Thor there, alone.

“Sleep well?” He says by way of greeting.

Thor’s strained smile says what he needs to know. “The room was quite comfortable.”

“Better than those thin mattresses with springs sticking into your back.”

Thor chuckles. “Much.”

“More nightmares?” Thor doesn’t respond to that. “As long as they’re not…”

“They’re not prophecies,” Thor reassures him quickly. “Never fear, I have not had a vision since the one in Lithuania. I hope that means things are quiet for now. No, these were merely, you know, _regular_ nightmares.”

“I feel you there,” Steve says. “We’ve all certainly got plenty of nightmare fuel. You more than most, I expect.”

“Hm.” Thor sighs and leans against the railing. “The worst are the ones that are so vivid, they masquerade as reality. I dreamt last night that we were still in Thanos’s custody. It felt as though we had never escaped. I came out here for the fresh air, to try and clear my mind.” Thor turns his face towards the sun. “What are you doing up this early?”

Steve sits on the bench. “I should explain some things.”

Thor listens patiently, to the story of the Winter Soldier and how it was embedded in the debate on the Accords, without evident shock or judgment.

“I know I should have told Tony about my assumptions,” He finishes. “But there was still a bit of doubt. They still could have been lying. And I wanted, so badly, for it not to be true, though I knew it was.” Steve shakes his head. “Can’t change that. And even then, I don’t think there was any changing either of our minds about the Accords. We were both too damn stubborn. That’s the part I wouldn’t change.”

“You wouldn’t sign them?”

Steve shakes his head. “They were bad legislation from the start. But I would have told Tony the truth from the beginning. I don’t know, maybe he could have helped.”

“Or maybe not. The Wakandans have?”

“They’ve broken the programming. No more triggering the Winter Soldier. And they’ve given him a slice of peace. Peace that’s going to be broken pretty soon, but…”

“If Tony changed his mind about the Accords, if he offered help in the battle against Thanos, would you take it?” Thor asks. He watches Steve carefully.

Steve thinks of the battered old flip phone. He wonders if Tony still even has it, or if he’d chucked it in the Hudson.

“Yes. Would you?”

Thor rubs his beard. “I-”

“Good morning.” They are interrupted by T’Challa’s emergence onto the balcony. “I trust you slept well?”

“Very comfortably,” Thor replies, looking as happy as Steve is that the conversation could turn away from their conflict with Tony. There is no easy solution there, and Steve wasn’t sure what Thor had been about to say. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what Thor was going to say.

“I hope I am not interrupting,” T’Challa glances between them.

“No, I was just…catching Thor up on some things he missed out on. Our goat farming friend.”

“Ah, and how is Sergeant Barnes doing this morning?”

“Very well, if maybe a little overrun with kids. In both senses of the word.” Steve smiles. “They really seem to like him.”

“They do. They think he’s quite the entertainment.” T’Challa shakes his head, amused. “Are you ready for our meeting? I’ve told everyone to assemble in the upper conference room, I believe it will be quite large enough to hold us all.”

Thor looks strained, distant. “Ready as I’ll ever be, I imagine. I will fetch my brother and meet you there.”

“Wait,” T’Challa stops him. “I hope you know that we will not betray you to Secretary Ross and the rest. I promise it. Just as we promised Captain Rogers.”

“Thank you. It seems our only problem now is Thanos. And there is nowhere in the universe to be safe from him.”

 

In the morning, Loki wakes gasping from a vague and blurry nightmare of being bound, helpless under the eye of Thanos. He wakes alone. Thor’s left a scrawled note on the bedside table, Went to explore. _Will be back before meeting_.

He feels no more rested than he had been when he retired the night before. His magic feels odd, stretched and thin, like he has never felt it before. He has never accidentally drawn on the magic of another before either. He still feels sick with himself but he shoves it down and dresses. He’s glad to be rid of the Midgardian clothing and back in the more familiar, soft leathers of his Asgardian clothes.

Loki opens the shutters on the wide windows and looks out at the scenery, absentmindedly fiddling with the edge of his cape and trying to think of nothing.

Thor enters, just before their meeting is set to start. “You’re up.” He says.

“We’ve got work to do, don’t we?”

“Indeed. Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough.” There was the nightmare, but it was far from the worst of them. “Where did you go?”

“Out, to the lower balcony. I was speaking with Steve. He shared more information about his conflict with Tony Stark.” Thor sighs. “It’s complicated. More than I understood. He has a further personal stake in this fight than I realized. It was not simply about the Accords.”

“What does that mean for us?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I do know it makes Steve extremely unlikely to betray us to Ross, though he is open to the possibility of reconciling with Stark, should he have a change of heart. And that T’Challa also is aware of this complication, that comforts me.” Thor looks at him a long moment. “You’re not yet convinced.”

“Of course not. I am wary of all of this, but I agree that it is the only way forwards. Are you open to the possibility of reconciling with Stark?”

Thor touches his shoulder.  “Not if it risks you. Never.”

One of the red-clothed guards escorts them through the palace to a room with a large round table. Like the rest of the palace design, the room contains floor to ceiling windows looking out on the vista, and large screens. The only ones who are there when they arrive are Steve and T’Challa. They politely greet them and return to their conversation, drawing Thor in after a moment. Loki settles himself stiffly beside Thor at the table as more gather around them.

Sam plops down in the chair next to him.

“Morning!” He says brightly. “How’s it going? You like Wakanda yet? That farmhouse had it’s charms, but it’s got nothing on here.”

Loki smiles politely, quietly glad to see Sam. “I’ve hardly got the chance to explore yet.” And he probably wouldn’t, if he were being honest. Going off on his own seemed like a bad idea.

“You should take a day to check out the eastern hills, there’s a path to this giant statue of a panther, very cool.” Loki listens to same chatter about the hiking trails outside of the city and feels himself slowly begin to unwind. Sam is relaxed and cheerful and does not seem to fear or distrust this new nation they’ve found themselves in. Despite himself, Loki finds he trusts Sam’s opinion on the matter.

A young woman sits on Sam’s other side. “What did you do to your drone? I just made all of those adjustments and now you bring it back to me broken?!”

“Hey, come on, Shuri, it was an accident. We had a bit of an issue getting out of Lithuania. And I don’t think the frequencies liked being transported by magic, they started wigging out after the teleport thing.”

The look on Shuri’s face is quite amusing. “Magical teleportation? So I have to plan for magical teleportation now? I swear-” She starts muttering under her breath, tapping away at a tablet. “You are _killing_ me, Wilson.”

“Sorry, princess.”

“I suppose I should apologize,” Loki says tentatively. They both look at him. “Considering it was my magic that seems to have broken it.”

“Aren’t you the one who attacked New York? I heard you were on the good guys’ side now.”

“…I suppose so?”

“Hm. Well. If you are the one who wrecked my work, you’ll have to help me fix it. Magical teleportation.” She shakes her head.

T’Challa ends the conversation by clearing his throat, calling them to order. “Let us get started, now that we are all here.”

They start by filling in the basic shape of Thanos’s aims, strategies, and the coming threat. Then they begin outlining their aims.

“The most important thing now is to protect the Stones we have. We’ll have to reach out to that sorcerer holding the Time Stone.”

“It should be temporarily safe with him, though we may want to reassess his security measures in person,” Loki says. “Mind is a primary concern, considering the nature of it’s vessel.” There is an awkward moment of silence. “I think it is best to attempt to remove the Stone from the android.”

Wanda looks betrayed. “He’s more than that! It’s not…you’ve all being talking about _saving_ lives, about how insane Thanos’s plan is to sacrifice half the universe-”

“Wanda’s right,” Steve says. “We don’t trade lives.”

“Well, how much of the Mind Stone is tied up in this Vision?” Loki asks. “Is it just his powers or is it the core of his being?”

“I think if we take out the Mind Stone, there will still be a lot of Vision left,” Natasha says. “Obviously, I don’t know for sure. But I think the best parts might be left behind.”

Steve nods. “So we try to figure out how to do it without given up Vision. No trading lives.”

“Is that even possible? I mean, it just seems kind of impossible.” Sam asks. “To remove the Stone and leave Vision?”

“Shuri?” T’Challa asks.

“I don’t know.” Shuri shakes her head. “Maybe. But I’ve never seen the plans. We’ll need someone who knows what was done originally.”

“And even then, it did not seem like the most organized construction project.” Loki glances at Thor, the reprimand plain on his face.

“There are only two people who could give us detailed information,” Shuri continues. “Tony Stark and Bruce Banner.”

“And they are not in any position to help us,” Thor groans.

“I might be able to work backwards, once Vision is here,” Shuri says. “But I cannot make any promises until I’ve been able to study what’s going on.”

Wanda bites her lip.

“We’ll try,” Steve reassures her.

“The other main issue is our communications,” Thor says. “This conflict is far, far bigger than just Earth. And we cannot keep relying on my inconsistent visions to keep us informed of Thanos’s movements.”

“Perhaps if you had put more effort into _practicing_ and becoming a proper seer, we wouldn’t-”

Thor kicks him under the table. “Not helpful, Loki.”

“ _Ow_.” He says pointedly. “But yes, we’ve been pitifully in the dark. We got lucky that Thor had a Vision of Thanos taking the Reality Stone and Gamora. We need to make contact with Heimdall and Valkyrie.”

“So we need someone who is familiar, well-versed with both Earth’s and Asgard’s technology. With no word from Bruce Banner, that leaves one person who can help us.”

“Jane Foster,” Natasha finishes.

“I thought you two split up?” Sam asks. “I heard she dumped you.”

“And if she ended the relationship, can we trust her not to turn us in?” Wanda asks.

“Things ended…amicably. As amicably as can be expected. And Jane’s never been one for governmental authority.”

“But it’s possible that Ross is watching her,” Steve says. “They know you might go to her for help.”

“I did lie to Stark about it,” Thor admits. “When I went to Norway, to meet with the lawyer, I told him I’d gone to see Jane.”

“So we must be careful how we retrieve her,” T’Challa says thoughtfully.

“We could approach her in public. Someone they will not expect to be connected with you all. At…a conference perhaps?” Shuri taps on her tablet, swiping up and the image of a conference website in London appears on the large screen. “Jane Foster is giving a talk, in three days. I am sure we can wrangle a few passes for the Wakandan Scientific Outreach by then, especially for the princess herself.” She gives a mocking little wave.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course! It will be fun. There’s also a panel in the morning that I am very interesting in, on the-”

“Shuri…” T’Challa scolds. “Focus.”

“Well, I will have to act the part, won’t I? If I go and make a beeline to Dr. Foster’s panel, that will look even more suspicious. And I never get to go to conferences, let me have my fun.”

Thor still looks concerned, rubbing his beard. “I still regret the lack of Bruce, both for his companionship and his skill. He is the most familiar with our systems. His expertise in this matter is sorely missed.”

“Actually, Jane _is_ preferable, sorry, brother,” Loki says. “It’s true, that Bruce would be better for communicating with Heimdall and Valkyrie, given his work on the ship’s mechanics. But there’s something else, that Jane’s expertise on our _transportation_ can help with. Something I haven’t told you yet.”

Thor looks at him warily. “I am listening.”

“A while ago, I sent plans to the dwarves on Nidavellir. For a weapon.”

“A weapon?” Steve looks puzzled.

“Nidavellir is home to a massive forge and skilled smiths,” Thor explains. “It is where Mjolnir was forged. But there has been no word from the dwarves for ages?”

“They responded to my plans,” Loki says. “When I was posing as Odin, I sent them the proposed schematics. They said it was doable, but I did not hear back after that. I assumed they were caught up in making it work and then did not know how to reach us after Asgard’s destruction.”

“What sort of weapon did you ask them to build, brother?”

Loki grins. “An axe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we're in Wakanda and we're making plans! The Valkyrie's hooked up with the Guardians and things are getting closer to the Big War. 
> 
> Also, I don't remember if I addressed this, but yeah, I have no idea how Tony and Pepper got back together. I just decided to go with essentially what happened in the MCU, where they seem to have resolved their issues 'off screen'. (I rewatched both _Civil War_ and _Homecoming_ recently...pretty sure it happens off screen.)
> 
> Obviously, I have not seen _Endgame_ yet and won't until Friday and currently remain entirely unspoiled (and let's try and keep it that way!) so I have no idea how much of a fix-it this is going to end up being haha. Still a huge Canon Divergence. I am looking forward to seeing it...mostly so I can figure out what I want to steal. I have a rough outline of the concluding story, just need to figure out a few things. 
> 
> I'll be posting these three chapters on Wednesday evenings, apparently. Mostly because I just decided to post today. Was going to wait until Sunday, but I figured everyone might need some _Endgame_ recovery time. I know I probably will haha. And this chapter was done, so why not! 
> 
> Good luck with _Endgame_ anxiety everybody! You're welcome to visit me on tumblr at bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com ;-)


	7. Part II: Preparations; or, Guests in the Kingdom of Wakanda (2/3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone's hard at work solving problems, but some have more difficult fixes than others.

The convention hall is massive, and packed. There are clustered groups of uniformed high schoolers chattering excitedly under the watchful eye of their chaperones, harried grad students checking their schedules, presenters reviewing their notes in the corners. Shuri has never been to a conference this large before and soaks it in to make up for the years of missing out. She passes easily through the crowd, aided by the stern expressions of the Dora Milaje that flank her. 

“Princess,” The convention organizer they’d spoken to this morning rushes up to her. “I have talked with Dr. Foster, she is happy to meet with you, just as soon as her panel is finished this afternoon.” Shuri smiles widely at the man. He’d been quite frazzled when they’d approached with their request, evidently not anticipating the arrival of foreign royalty at his physics convention. 

“Of course, thank you very much, professor.” 

“The panel will be in ballroom C, your highness,” He says. “Should you like to watch. I must confess, I did not realize you were interested in astrophysics. Wakanda’s science outreach has been mostly involved in molecular engineering, and the tech sector-” 

“I’m interesting in many things,” She says. The panel’s beginning cuts their conversation short and she goes to the hall to take her seat. 

Jane Foster in person is about what Shuri had expected. Obviously brilliant, if a little scattered, presenting her paper and answering questions with passion and intellect. After the panel concludes, Jane goes to sit at the folding table in front of her poster, to answer questions and sign copies of her book. Shuri is escorted there by the harried conference organizer. 

“Hello, Dr. Foster,” She says with a wide smile. “I thoroughly enjoyed your panel.” 

“Thanks!” Jane returns brightly. “I’ve heard great things about the Wakandan science and tech outreach, I’m really honored you could come to my panel. How old are you anyways? It’s been great to see Wakanda reach out to so many young high school students, really encouraging for the next generation.” 

“I will be eighteen next month. While I enjoyed hearing your talk, I must confess Dr. Foster, I did come with an ulterior motive.” She drops her voice lower. “I come with a message from a mutual friend of ours. One who needs your help.” She slides the scrawled note across the table. Jane’s eyes widen as she reads the brief message. “Is there somewhere more private we can talk?” 

“Yeah, ah, yeah. Gabe,” She calls over one of the grad students that had accompanied her. “Can you field questions? I’ll be back soon...probably.” Once they’re in a private room, one of the unused convention spaces, with the Dora Milaje watching the door, Jane spins around, running a hand through her long brown hair. “Okay, what the heck is this? Thor’s been on Earth for what, months now, and he can’t call me himself? He sends a message through a Wakandan princess? What the _fuck?_ ” She shakes her head. “Sorry. I guess I shouldn’t swear, or take this out on you.” 

“Thor has been...indisposed up to now. He only recently arrived in my country and doesn’t want anyone to know he is there, for obvious reasons.” 

“Obvious reasons...was he hurt?”

“Not hurt. Imprisoned. Have you heard of the Raft?” 

Jane starts to pace. “I don’t...pay attention much to politics. And I tried to put all the weird stuff out of my life when things ended. Damn, I didn’t think...I thought he was just ignoring me, you know? And now...you said he needs my help? The note said he would explain everything in person?” 

“He feared someone intercepting the communication. There’s a war coming, Dr. Foster, and they need your help to return to their people and have a fighting chance.” She stops in her tracks, staring at the wall. 

“A war?” Her gaze is distant. She frowns. “I don’t know how much help I was in the last war.” 

“They need you.” 

Jane looks back at Shuri, suddenly wary. “Wait. ‘They?’”  
  


Many, many, many miles away, two ships are floating in tandem. Heimdall pilots one, Rocket the other. Aboard the Milano, the Valkyrie and Peter Quill are rummaging through the closets, seeking anything that might give them a clue to where Thanos is hiding. 

“You said that he send Gamora after the Soul Stone? Could something tell us where that is? Maybe we could head them off?”

“I doubt it. Gamora wouldn’t have been that stupid to leave something just lying around with such sensitive intel.” 

“So it’s just in her head?”

“‘Suppose so.” 

“I guess that’s good. Means she’s worth more to him alive than dead.” 

Peter stops digging through a drawer. He sits on the bed. “She wanted me to kill her, she was so desperate not to get taken again. But I didn’t. Thanos stopped me. So he’s probably fucking torturing her and it’s my fault.” 

“Sounds like it wasn’t, if Thanos stopped you.” 

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” 

Valkyrie shakes out an empty bag. “I don’t really care.” 

“Are you always this warm and fuzzy?” 

“Look, do you want me to make you feel better or do you want to find Thanos?” She stops and closes the closet. “I don’t particularly want to dwell either on the thought of what Thanos does to people he’s captured. I’ve got people missing too. And I don’t want to sit here wondering if they’re being tortured, because that makes me hope that they’re dead and that makes me feel like shit. So let’s just stop thinking about it, and focus on finding him, or this Stone.” 

They keep searching the room, finding nothing. 

Peter opens a box from under the bed, digging through what looks like a blend of ship parts and knives. “So why do they call you the Queen of the Dead?” 

Valkyrie sighs. “It’s a long and foolish story. Based on rumor spreading like wildfire, as it was always fucking custom on Asgard. Hela - Odin’s firstborn daughter, heir to the throne before she went a little nuts and murdered all the other Valkyries - was the Goddess of Death. I had…an incident a while back and had maybe a vision.” She sets the book back on the shelf. “It was a Ravager weapon, before you, _apparently_ , got them off our tail. Some gun that put me in a coma and took me on a grand tour of all my past crimes. It was lovely.”

“Never heard of it, and I grew up on a Ravager ship,” Peter says. “Must have stolen it off somebody.” 

“Well anyways…there was this one part…looking back it seems like prophecy. The old Queen of Asgard, Frigga, was a witch - she could see the future. She appeared with this real bitch of a giantess and a truly annoying raven and predicted that I would be the ‘Queen of the Dead.’” She shrugs. “Then after Thanos killed - captured, whatever - Thor, the king, and Loki, his heir, I was the logical next in line. Once I realized that, I got _wildly_ drunk and spilled the beans to the wrong person. Word got around, they started whispering about it.” She opens a drawer, scowling as she has to move aside a dirty t-shirt. “It makes a sort of sense, I have to admit. Asgard is mostly damned ghosts now. I might as well be Queen of the Dead - the ghosts and corpses and the haunted.” She sighs. “If you travel any more with us you’ll see that Asgard is still half built on magic and superstition, cobbled together by prophecy. So much changed, but so much stayed the same.” 

“Doesn’t sound that different from the Ravagers, honestly. Superstition, a crazy code that makes sense to no one. That was them, it was nuts but I guess they were kind of home. Sorry to hear about Asgard.” 

“I hadn’t been back in a couple centuries. Been hiding out on Sakaar.” 

“Oh, yikes.” 

That makes the Valkyrie smile.

They finish searching the bedroom and the storeroom and find nothing. They are no closer to finding Thanos and are rapidly running out of leads.   
  


When Thor goes to find Loki mid-morning, he is stretched out on the long bench along the window in their room, flat on his back with his eyes shut. He had complained of a headache at breakfast and it seems to have only grown worse in the interim. 

“I’ve brought you some water,” Thor says quietly. He sits next to the bench, on the floor, and sets the glass in Loki’s reach. “Jane will be here soon.” 

“And you’re anticipating seeing her, I’m sure?” 

“I am a little apprehensive, I will admit. But it’s good. It’s moving forward with our plans.” His long breath stutters a bit. “We’re regaining control. That’s a good thing, no matter how our relationship ended.” 

“We need to talk about our magic.” 

Thor blinks in surprise at Loki’s abrupt change in subject. “Loki, you don’t have to-” 

“I must. You said as much yourself, the other night.” 

“You’ve a headache.” 

“It’s manageable, it’s just the product of my attempts to figure out this mess.” He keeps his eyes closed but his voice is steady. “Just _listen_ to me.” 

“Fine, brother.” Thor sits, leaning back against the wall. “If you insist, we’ll talk about this now. So you _knew_ there would be consequences to mingling our magics as we did?” 

“As _I_ did. But yes. I chose to ignore them because…because I was frightened and childish and thought only of my own comfort in the moment.” 

“It was _not_ your fault, there is nothing-”

“Just listen, Thor.” He opens his eyes to glare at his brother. “Fine, if it makes you feel better, I will not take the entirety of the blame for this mistake. I will explain this as neutrally as I can. Just save your commentary for the end.” He closes his eyes again. “When I reached out to you in the prison, the first night, it was nothing. A brief brushing of our minds, we’ve done it a hundred times before. But when I kept doing it, kept drawing your magic into myself, putting mine into yours, it created a connection between us. A tether. I just…kept doing it, strengthening the connection. It has created a _dangerous_ codependency between us.” Loki opens his eyes and looks at Thor. “You can feel it too, can’t you? A pull between us? You might think it’s just normal anxiety, you certainly have enough reason to be nervous when I’m out of your sight, but inside you know it’s more, it’s deeper than that. It’s _wrong_.” Thor bites back his protest. “We need to cut it all off, to prevent incidents like that night.” 

“How?” 

“It will be mostly my burden, to fight the temptation to draw upon you for my own childish comforts, and to work on building my mental wards again. I…” Loki takes a shuddering breath. “I am not certain I will ever get them back to what they were. But I must still block you. And you must do the same. Stop trying to sense my emotions, stop trying to soothe me with the magic.” 

Thor nods. “I can do that.” 

“And we must separate.” 

“Separate?” Thor feels a small spike of nerves.

“We’ll have to, probably, before the end of this. It will be easier if we do it now. I can request my own quarters from the staff.” Loki’s voice is thick, though he schools his expression to a flat mask. 

Thor takes a deep breath. “Am I allowed to comment now?” 

“Fine.” 

“I understand what you’re saying,” Thor begins. “And I will do as you suggest. I will refrain from using the psychic connection between us. But it wasn’t your fault, Loki, and you know that I am not one to shy away from placing blame on you when you deserve it.” His brother’s lips twitch. “We made a mistake, and yes, there are consequences. But we can fix it. Together. I understand your point, about separating before we are forced to by this fight. But we don’t have to do it all at once. The last few months, Loki… _Norns_ , I have no idea how long it will take for me to forget the Ark burning around us, that cell on Sanctuary, the Raft…I am saying that I understand your position, but I do not believe we should strip it all away in an instant. Here they have a saying…’going cold turkey.’” 

Loki raises a brow at him, lips twitching in amusement, though his eyes are still watery. “Cold turkey?”

“It will make it harder, in the long run, to move forward, if we do not ease the connection apart. Cutting it off altogether will make it more difficult to keep the connection closed.” Thor runs his fingers through his hair, which is finally growing longer after being shorn on Sakaar. “And I cannot imagine leaving you in the dark, to wake alone from your nightmares.” He sighs heavily. “And to be honest, I do not want to wake alone from my own nightmares either.” Loki blinks and looks away from Thor’s admission of vulnerability. “Did you think I did not have nightmares? That I do not wake in fear?” Loki opens his mouth to respond, but before he can they are interrupted by the entrance of one of the Dora Milaje. 

“The princess is returning with Dr. Foster. Their flight is on final approach.” Thor thanks her and she leaves them. 

“We can talk about this later.” He offers Loki a hand up. “Let us go meet Jane.” 

Thor thought he was ready to see Jane after the awkwardness of their final breakup, but his heart still skips a beat when he sees her in the hall outside of the meeting room. 

“Hello, Jane.” 

She practically gapes back at him. “You cut your hair,” are the first words out of her mouth. 

“Why do people always comment first on your hair, brother? And not the fact that you are now missing an eye?” Loki says with a half smile. He’s managed to wipe away all the pain and desperation from his face in their short walk to the hall. Jane’s eyes flit to Loki. 

“You…you _asshole!_ ” And she launches herself at Loki, shoving him hard in the chest.

Thor winces. “Jane, I can-”

“See, this is the reaction I thought he’d get from people,” Sam remarks to Wanda. They’ve gathered a bit of an audience. The others all watch the confrontation with some amusement.

“You’re such a _fucking_ ass!” She cries, as she pounds his chest. Thor tries to get between them, to block Jane’s fury.

“I thought we left things on such a good note,” Loki laughs. “Didn’t I save your life on Svartalfheim? Repeatedly, if I recall?” 

“You let us think you were dead! You let me think that I’d gotten you killed too, after…” Tears fill her eyes. “I thought that you were fucking dead.” 

Thor, feeling exhausted already, scrubs a hand over his face. “Jane, let’s talk about this later.” 

“No, I want an apology. That really messed me up, and your brother, for a long time after that. Do you have any idea how much you hurt us?”

“You were the ones who _left my body_ on that _wasteland_.” 

“Yeah, and I was torn up about it for months afterwards. I felt so guilty, I was sick with it. And what, you were just laughing behind our backs? While Thor cried over your body, seriously, what the _fuck?_ ” 

“Jane, it was real,” Thor confirms. She turns away from Loki and looks back to Thor. 

“Real?”

“I’ve got the scars to prove it,” Loki says dryly. Jane looks like she’s going to faint. 

“Real. You were _really_ stabbed?”

“I really don’t know how you both figured I had arranged that plan, ‘oh, do be careful to miss my spine, make sure the venom on your blade is not _too_ potent.’” 

Jane just blinks at Loki, shocked. “So you _were_ hurt…and we left you?” 

Loki’s face twists. “Well, yes. I woke up on the sands alone. Thor can tell you what followed.” 

“Later,” Thor says quickly, trying to distract. “It’s in the past. Too much has happened since then, we must focus on the current situation. There’s much to fill you in on.” 

“The last few years have truly been quite dramatic,” T’Challa remarks quietly as they begin to file into the meeting room. 

“Don’t even get me started.” Thor rubs his face. “You don’t even know the half of it. I swear, the last six years have felt like five hundred.” 

“There will be time to rest soon,” T’Challa attempts to reassure. Thor can’t quite believe it. He hasn’t been able to rest since that disastrous voyage to Jotunheim. At each turn, he tells himself it will be better, things will ease. They had, a little, at times on Asgard, as well as on the Ark - which was a calamity in itself but had the characteristics of something like peace, until that little world had shattered. 

Thor sighs. “Perhaps.” 

Behind him, he hears Jane quietly apologizing. “I’m sorry for accusing you.”

“It is not like you didn’t have cause.” Loki responds. “And for what it’s worth…I apologize for the trouble I caused you.” 

“Thank you. I’m glad you’re alive, truthfully. Though I wish you thought to tell me sooner.” 

“We’ve been rather preoccupied.” Loki’s voice sounds rather cool as he summarizes the trauma of the past couple years in four short words. Then they put their conflict behind them, to Thor’s relief. It is at least one problem off of his list.

Once they settle at the table, they run Jane through the basic problems they’re facing, and the proposed solutions. The screens had filled rapidly in their planning meetings over the last few days, leaving them to revert to a more basic solution - boards and pins, notes and charts scrawled across them in erasable marker. Five boards, plus the screens, now are lined up, nearly blocking the windows. 

Jane listens patiently, jotting down a few notes in a crumpled journal every once in a while. “Okay, so this Thanos guy is trying to gather the Stones to destroy half the universe. Cool. Great.” 

“The Aether was one,” Thor tells her. “He has since captured it. Meaning he will be on the way here soon, with an army.” 

“We are preparing our troops,” T’Challa says. “But Earth cannot defend herself alone.” 

“If we can contact the Asgardians, they can keep us informed, gather allies, bring them here to draw Thanos away. A two front war, taking them from either side,” Steve says. “Like my first war.” 

“You’re the only one on Earth who’s gotten a look at Asgardian technology up close,” Loki says from his place behind her, leaning against the wall. 

“So between you and Shuri, working from Wakanda’s materials, you can bridge the gap,” Sam says. “Well. Hopefully.” 

“There will be other issues you may be able to advise on. At least, advise us on who might be safe to contact.” Shuri hits two buttons and the second screen changes to an image of Vision - the Mind Stone. “We need to disentangle the stone from the circuitry in the android. Only then will he be safe. And we can work on trying to destroy it.” 

“But, for obvious reasons, we can’t ask Tony Stark to help us with Vision,” Wanda says. 

Jane rises from her seat and goes to the board. “How are you going to get Vision then?” 

“Let us worry about that,” Steve says. 

“Vision and I have an arrangement. We’ll grab him the next time we meet. In Scotland. The date has been set for a while, it will not be suspicious.”

“You and I will just worry about contacting Asgard for now,” Shuri says. “I have some plans that I’m hoping you might take a look at.” 

“And, if you think you can...building a wormhole. A portal.” 

Jane turns back to Thor. “A portal? Where?”

“It’s a place called Nidavellir. The Great Forges of the Dwarves.” 

“Thor needs to pick up an axe,” Loki smiles. 

Jane nods faintly. “Right. Right. Okay, I think most of this is doable. But you’re wrong about one thing, I’m _not_ the only one on Earth who’s seen Asgardian tech up close.” 

“Who else is there?” Sam asks. Loki shoots Thor a puzzled look and he shrugs. 

“I got an email from Bruce Banner a while ago.” Loki stands up straighter, Thor leaning forward in his chair with interest. “Sorry I didn’t mention it sooner, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was walking into. And he made it pretty clear he didn’t want me to tell anyone he was here. So I didn’t mention it until I was sure it was safe.” 

“Bruce survived?” Loki sounds astonished. “He’s here? But he never…”

“Stark,” Thor growls. 

“He mentioned he was talking to Stark, was getting kind of a hinky vibe. He also said he was traveling with Asgardians through space, so I’m assuming he’ll know the Asgardian tech really well.”

“ _Know_ it, he was the one who reprogrammed half our communications array,” Loki says. “Where is he?” 

“Staying somewhere in New York, with Stephen Strange, I guess he’s got some kind of safehouse now-” Loki groans and rolls his eyes. 

“We’re acquainted,” Thor says. “Safehouse might be stretching it a bit, but he did offer us safety the last time we were on Earth, didn’t he, brother?” 

Loki gives Thor a withering look. “Speak for yourself. He is extremely annoying. But yes, rather isolationist, so Bruce isn’t in any danger. Strange holds the other Infinity Stone - Time - and though it _severely_ pains me to admit it, it is probably safe in his hands for now.”

“He will have to be here to help us,” Shuri says. 

“We’ll figure out a way to get him here,” T’Challa assures. 

“There’s one thing I don’t understand about all this,” Jane gestures at the board. “Why aren’t you using the bifrost? I could understand if you were just working with Wakandan tech, but if you were planning on coming to find me all along, and know about my work with the bifrost, why not align the array with the regular frequencies?”

Thor and Loki exchange another look and Thor sighs. “Jane, you’ll want to sit down for this.”   
  


The others eventually leave them alone for the recounting. This one’s harder than the rest; the others were more impersonal testimonies, this was far more emotional. Jane is clearly in shock, overcome by the intensity of the end of Asgard. Loki watches her with some fascination as Thor tells her of Hela, of Ragnarok. He had grown so used to everyone knowing, it had been a normal fact of their lives for so long. Jane’s shock and horror reminds him that this is not normal. 

“And that’s how we ended up traveling with Bruce, he named it the Ark. We spent a year and a half working our way closer to Earth.” 

“Where are the rest of the survivors from Asgard?” 

“Still out there. We hope. That’s why we need you to help us contact them.” 

“And how did you get separated from them?” Thor sits back, looking suddenly troubled at her question. His breath stutters a little on the inhale. Loki thinks he should step in, say something to spare his brother from having to say it, but his own tongue is suddenly frozen to the roof of his mouth. “I’m thinking it was in a not-great way?” Jane asks gently. “Maybe later…” 

Thor nods. “Yes. Later, when Bruce gets here.”

“We’ve just had to tell everyone, again and again,” Loki says quietly. “There was Stark, and then Rogers, and then T’Challa…” 

“I should go talk to Steve. He asked to see me once we were finished.” Abruptly, Thor rises and leaves them alone in the empty conference room. They watch him go, both knowing that he’s going to compose himself.

“That bad, huh?” Jane murmurs. Loki comes to sit in Thor’s recently vacated seat. “And you were arrested when you arrived on Earth?” 

“You may have recalled some of Thor’s appearances on television, to support the Sokovia Accords. I was being held hostage,” He says quietly. “To ensure Thor’s...cooperation.” 

“Shit. I am so sorry.” 

Loki nods, pressing his lips together against a sudden anxious nausea. A deep breath settles his stomach a little. “Would you like to see the lab you’ll be working in?” 

He asks the Dora Milaje to escort them to Shuri’s workspace and let his brother know where they had gone. Loud, pulsing music is playing on the speakers when they arrive at the clean lab. They find both the princess and the king at the workbench. Shuri rises excitedly at their entrance.

“Welcome to my lab, Dr. Foster. I will show you your workspace. This one is mine, no touching, I’ve got a new project working on vibranium and it’s a little unstable right now. Got it?” 

“Ah, okay,” Jane grins, amused. “I got it. Unstable? Um-”

Shuri smiles widely. “Good. Don’t worry about that. I think we’ll be great partners.” Shuri leads Jane away, chattering animatedly about the work she’d already done that day, how much of Jane’s writing she’s read, and her plans. 

T’Challa shakes his head. “I cannot keep up with her enthusiasm sometimes. But at least now things should proceed quickly.” Loki hums and sits on a stool. “Especially with Dr. Banner.” 

“Yes. That was a pure stroke of luck. I didn’t dare to hope he had survived, let alone made it all the way to Earth. When will you retrieve the android who bears the Stone?” 

“They are discussing that with Ms. Maximoff now.” 

“Won’t there be a risk?” Loki intently watches Shuri showing Jane some kind of scanner. “Of Stark following him here?” 

“They will take just as many precautions as we did bringing you here. Do not underestimate Wakandan security. We have not been caught yet.” 

“There is always a first time.” 

“You are right. But I don’t think it will be this time. And wouldn’t you rather the Stone be in our hands?” 

“True.” 

“Ms. Maximoff is particularly insistent that the stone be removed, without hurting the one called Vision. She truly loves him.” 

“Fascinating. The Mind Stone is already so embedded in her power…” Loki sighs. 

“Will you be able to help? With your prior knowledge of the Mind Stone and how it is used?” Loki looks sharply at T’Challa’s face, suddenly wary, but he can detect no condemnation in the king’s expression. 

“I…do not know. I have never used any of the Stones outside of their containers. And the scepter...there are many things about that time I don’t recall in much detail. The Stone was working on me as well, guiding my magic and my use of it. The Tesseract did the same. Freed from containment, I don’t know how much help I will be with them.” 

There’s a metal band wrapped around his chest, he’s sure of it. His breath comes short at the thought of the Stones. He forces a deeper breath to try and loosen it. The temptation to reach out with his magic, to find Thor’s power and wrap himself up in it like a blanket, rears its ugly head. Instead, he gathers the magic to his core, concentrating his seidr into a tight ball in his chest. He feels cold as ice. 

Fingertips brush his arm and he starts violently. T’Challa retreats, raising his hands in surrender. 

“I apologize. You were barely breathing.” He watches for a moment while Loki gathers the threads of his sanity. “Are you alright?” 

Loki nods. “I’m fine.” He takes another shuddering breath, loosening the metal around his chest a bit. “Fine.” Loki shifts the topic. “How long have you been king?” T’Challa settles onto a stool, a few feet away, and gives Loki a brief story of his short reign. By the time Thor comes to find them, it’s nearly dinnertime and Loki’s temptation to reach out with magic has long faded. The weight of Thor’s hand settling on his shoulder is dearly welcomed though.

“How do they fare?” Thor asks. 

“I, frankly, have no idea,” T’Challa says. They all watch Jane and Shuri talking and gesturing at schematics on a screen. “I have learned not to ask too many questions.” 

“I’m sure they’ll give us a long report at dinner, brother. Whether we like it or not.” 

Thor squeezes his shoulder. “You’re right. And once Bruce gets here…” 

“It seems as if my home has suddenly become host to a very small but very impassioned science convention.” 

“Indeed.” Thor smiles. “Apologies.” 

“Is there a plan for retrieving Bruce from the sorcerer?” Loki asks. 

“Yes. We also discussed with Wanda what to do about Vision. We’ve confirmed, we’ll hold off until their prearranged meeting time, to avoid suspicion. Keep an eye on him, for the time being. We’re going to go for Bruce sooner. As soon as tomorrow, if possible. Steve is arranging some things now.” 

“Very good,” T’Challa says. “We should attempt to have a plan in place for the extraction of the Stone before Vision arrives.” 

“And Strange can be warned more urgently about the dangers of the artifact he wears around his neck.” 

“Yes. Strange can be warned.” Thor looks a little distant for a moment, sending an alarm bell ringing through Loki’s head. The small smile drops off his face, and he gives Thor a little nudge with his elbow. Thor blinks and his expression clears. “Nothing, sorry.” Thor kisses the top of his head, but Loki isn’t quite reassured. 

T’Challa checks his watch. “Dinner will be soon. We should head back upstairs. We can send someone to fetch them when it’s time.” They follow T’Challa out of the lab, but Thor stops him when they get to the hall. 

“Loki, hold on,” Thor says, putting a hand on his elbow. “We need to talk about something.” Loki’s stomach sinks. Something about Thor’s tone of voice, the tightness around his eye, tells him this isn’t going to be good. “Steve and I were talking, and we agreed…we agreed that he and I should go to retrieve Jane and Bruce from New York. Just the two of us.” 

Something cold breaks open in his chest. “Oh,” He says, numb. “Oh.” 

“It will be two days, maybe three. You said that we should try to separate, that this would be good.” 

Loki’s heart is thundering in his chest. “Yes. But then you said…I just didn’t think you meant…that was just this morning.”

“I know. But it makes sense. None of the others have ever met Strange, Steve won’t know where he’s going-” 

“You could give him directions,” Loki snaps. He is uncharitably angry with his brother, for something he knows is reasonable and had himself suggested mere hours before. 

“Brother. It’s just a couple days. A test run. You’ll be safe here. Wakanda-” 

“I know I will be _safe_. You don’t need to speak to me like a _child_.” 

Thor grasps his arms. “Loki. Stop. Let’s not fight about this, Loki, _please_.” Thor sounds just as anxious as Loki feels. “It will be good for us. You always do this. You suggest things that you want me to refuse, you wanted me to refuse to part from you. I understand why, but brother, you have to stop and speak plainly, for once-” 

“That is _not_ -” 

“You said, we need to be able to separate, if we’re going to _fix_ our magic.”

Loki makes a choked noise in his throat. “So you agree, you think I _ruined_ it.” 

“That is not what I said!” Thor cups his neck. “It was not your fault, nothing is ruined, but you were right that we need to work on separating and this way is easier. A fixed term. Three days, at the most. Steve and I leave in the morning. I will call you every day, twice if you want. This is the best way to get Bruce, to warn Strange. And then I will be back with you as soon as I can. Alright?” Loki reluctantly nods and lets Thor pull him into a stiff embrace. “Don’t be angry with me,” He whispers in his ear. Thor sounds so broken by the thought. Loki closes his eyes and presses closer. 

He doesn’t say he’s not angry. Because he is. It’s not fair, it’s not right, the anger isn’t even _really_ about Thor, but it’s there, simmering and making his stomach feel unsettled and his thoughts muddled and frustrated. And perhaps Thor was right, in a way. He had said that this morning partially because it was indeed true - but there was a part of him that wanted Thor to refuse and had delighted when he did. It wasn’t quite intentional, and Thor noticing it made him feel unsettled.

He pulls away then, and remains sullen and petulant, like the child he had insisted he was not, for the rest of the evening. 

That night, it is Thor who wakes from shuddering nightmares, clutching Loki desperately, and he has to acknowledge that Thor is even more shaken up by their upcoming separation than he is. His anger can only fade in the face of his older brother’s clear distress at their parting. 

“Just three days, right?” He whispers in the darkness as Thor struggles to get his breathing under control. “It will be like when you went to Norway. Pretend it’s when you went to Norway.” Thor pulls him tighter into his arms, holding him close, and does not appear to sleep for the rest of the night. 

In the morning, they eat a quiet breakfast with Steve, who looks awkwardly back and forth between them. T’Challa joins them as well, who ignores the tension. The four of them proceed to the landing pad, in the cool air of the morning. Thor and Steve are back dressed in normal Midgardian clothes. 

Thor presses a phone into his hands. “Like Norway, right?” 

Loki nods. “Yes. You’ll be careful?” 

“I promise, I will return as soon as I can.” Thor wraps his warm hand around his neck, bracing his head. “Play nice.” 

“Of course, brother,” Loki manages, voice a little unsteady. 

“Find Sam, or Natasha, check in with them if you need.” 

“He will be safe, I swear it,” T’Challa says. “You have my word.” 

“Thank you.” Thor is earnest but when he embraces Loki, he drops the Allspeak and whispers in his ear. “I know you can defend yourself, if you need.” Loki smiles. Thor pulls back, too soon for Loki’s comfort. “But give them a chance?” 

“I will.”

One last kiss to Loki’s forehead, and he’s drawing away. Thor and Steve board the jet and it takes off, taking Thor farther away from him and leaving him feeling cold.  
  


Thor is obviously skittish on the jet. Steve doesn’t want to comment on it, so he keeps forcing conversation. He manages to get Thor to loosen up as they chats about both of their voyages in the past few years. 

When they’re getting ready to land, Steve does address Thor’s obvious tension. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay with the jet? If you give me street names, landmarks, I could find my own way.” 

“And leave you without backup?” Thor offers him a small smile. “There is no guarantee that Strange will see you, but he has helped me before. Besides, things are different now. I was injured when they first captured us. Something they will find is not so easy to do a second time.” 

Steve feels the hair on the back of his arms start to stand, the static charge in the air crackling. “Right. But you still didn’t want Loki to come?” 

Steve had proposed it. He’d seen enough of Loki’s illusion magic, both during the battle for New York and in their brief stay in Lithuania, to realize he could be an asset to this mission. He could disguise them with magic, ease the way into the city. There was the risk that the authorities would be able to detect the magical fluctuations, but Steve thought it was worth it to suggest Loki accompanying them. Thor had flat out refused. 

Now he sighs. “If things do go wrong, I could not live with myself if I thought I had brought him back into danger.” 

Steve nods. “I get it. I do. It makes sense.” 

They land the jet in a forest, south of the city. Dressed in plain, regular clothes, disguised by mundanity and the changes to their appearance wrought by time and hardship. Any civilians looking for them still had the image of long hair, two eyed Thor and clean-shaven Steve. They keep to themselves, stick to the edges of crowds as they board the commuter train into the city. 

It was bizarre being back in the US. There was a small part of him that didn’t believe he would ever return to this country once he had fled it; the rest of him knew he would (he was Captain America, after all), but hadn’t thought he’d return like this. Anonymous, quiet, slinking through the huddled masses like a spy. Natasha would be proud.

They get off in the city and switch to the subway, Thor pointing out the closest stop on the map. They emerge to the streaming sunlight and crowded streets on Lafayette St. 

“This way,” Thor says. 

Steve’s eyes almost slide past the three story building, tucked in between a bar and a grocery store. If it weren’t for Thor, turning and walking up the front stairs with confidence, he might have just walked right by without a thought. 

“Freakin’ magic,” He mumbles to himself, with a tad bit more awe than he perhaps once would have. It still unnerved him a bit, but it also widened his world further than he had ever expected. 

Thor knocks on the door with his fist, the pounding reverberating in the entry way. Steve glances back at the sidewalk, but the people moving past don’t even look up at them. The carved brass eye on the center of the door glows. 

“Let us in, Strange,” Thor tells it. The glowing stops. 

“Wow.” 

A few seconds later, a man Steve has only seen in photographs answers the door. The cape that sweeps behind him is scarlet - and moving. 

“Thor, what a surprise.” He says flatly. 

“Is it?” Thor pushes past him. 

“Come on in,” Strange says. “You look…different.” 

“Well. It’s been a while.” He holds the door further open for Steve. 

Strange’s eyes widen as he recognizes Steve. “Nice to meet you, Captain Rogers.” 

“Just Steve is fine.” He steps into the foyer. He glances, impressed, around at the mahogany finishings and many artworks lining the walls. “How long has this place been here?” 

“Longer than you could possibly imagine.” 

“I think I got into a fight in the alley behind the grocery store, back in ’37.” 

“Fascinating. I’m sure you have colorful stories about the neighborhood, I’d love to hear some over tea. Shall I put on the-”

“You know what we’re here for, Strange,” Thor says. “Who we’re looking for.” 

“Of course. I’d figured you’d turn up eventually. Wong’s gone to fetch Dr. Banner from the attic where he’s set up a bit of a work station. If you follow me to the sitting room…”

They make it about halfway up the stairs before Bruce Banner comes barreling down towards them. 

“What the _hell_ , guys? Where have you been?” 

Thor breaks into a wide, genuine smile. “It’s a long story. But it is good to see you again.”  
  


Strange does conjure tea, and gathers them around a small table in the library.

“I was glad to hear from Jane that you’d survived the journey to Earth. We thought…”

“Yeah, what the hell was that? Was that how it felt to travel by bifrost? Because that was nuts.”

“Not quite. It was raw dark energy, not dissimilar to the way I arrived on Earth during our first meeting. Traveling by bifrost was a bit more controlled.”

“A bit? _Jesus_.” Bruce shakes his head. “And everyone else escaped?” 

“We think. We hope. There were some casualties, of course, but the escape pods deployed and I believe if there had been total destruction, Thanos would have spent more time rubbing it in our faces.”

“Jesus,” Bruce says again. 

“We need you to come back with us. We’ve got a lab, and we’re working with Dr. Foster and some other scientists,” Steve says. 

“We need to contact Valkyrie and figure out what’s going on out there. Do you think you can bridge the gap?” 

“I’ll have to see what we’re working with, but I think it’s doable. I’m assuming this isn’t going to be Stark tech…”

Thor’s expression clouds. “Indeed not.” 

“Thor, what _happened?_ How did you guys get here? Tony wouldn’t explain, just said he thought it was all bullshit-” 

“Later,” He says with a glance at Strange. “I’ll explain later.” 

“I think I’d like to hear,” Strange says.

“It’s hardly relevant-”

“It might be-”

Rage boils over. “Would you like to judge yourself how relevant each detail of the tortures that Thanos wrought upon us are to your guarding of the Time Stone?” The anger burns itself out quickly. “You’re a talented sorcerer, Strange. You may continue to guard the Stone and we will keep you abreast of our plans. But I think it’s time to take our leave.” 

“You’re right,” Strange says softly. “I apologize. We will double our surveillance. I will work on strengthening the spells and keep in contact.” 

They rise, and Strange holds out his hand. “Will you at least tell me where you’re hiding?” 

“What, Strange, you can’t figure it out on your own?” Thor gives him a half-smile.

“Apologies, doctor, but we think that information's best kept to ourselves for now,” Steve says. “We’ll call you.” 

Strange nods. “Fair enough. Take care of yourselves.” 

“You as well,” Thor says as they shake hands. “And the Stone.” 

“I will guard it with my life. More than my life, if I can.” 

“Thanks, Strange. Without you I would have been completely screwed.” 

“Any time, Dr. Banner. I hope we’ll be seeing each other under better circumstances one day.” 

Bruce gathers his things and they leave through the front entrance, back onto the crowded streets of Manhattan. 

“So are you guys at least going to tell _me_ where we’re going?”   
  


Loki is lingering in the lab, watching Jane work, when they arrive back in Wakanda. The door to the lab whooshes open, and then the air is driven from his lungs by Bruce Banner’s arms squeezing his middle. 

“Glad…to…see…you…too, Bruce,” He gasps. 

“ _Shit_ , Loki, I’m so sorry. What happened, shit, I just…”

“It’s…” _Fine_ , he means to say, though it is not fine. He just pats Bruce somewhat awkwardly on the back and is saved by Thor and Steve’s entrance and Jane awkwardly clearing her throat. 

“Hello, Dr. Banner, it’s nice to finally meet you.” 

“Right, Dr. Foster, thank you so much for your emails, they were really helpful.” He lets go of Loki to shake Jane’s hand warmly. 

“Welcome back,” Loki says with a small smile. Thor returns it, and embraces him with far more gentleness than Bruce did. Loki feels a tiny bit of lingering tension drain away. 

“How are you feeling?” Thor asks when he pulls back. 

“Fine. Better than…” The first day had been bad. He had felt like his blood was ice in his veins. It had been worse than the days on the Raft when Thor had been sent out and he was left alone. He assumed that the extended time back together had amplified the effects of their separation. He had shut himself up in his room, closed the blinds, and barely held back from weeping when Thor had called to check in. 

“Don’t lock yourself away, Loki,” Thor said to him, sensing his discomfort immediately. “Go find Sam, or Wanda, or go to the lab.” 

“Thor, that’s not the point.” 

“But it will help. Go.” 

He had. He had followed Thor’s order and found Sam first, let him show him around the outskirts of the palace. They’d come across T’Challa and gotten a history lesson on the tribes of Wakanda. The panic didn’t fully go away and he caught them looking at him with concern several times, but Sam had waved off T’Challa’s worried expressions and kept him distracted.

The next day he hovered in the lab, tiredly watching Jane and Shuri work. Nights were hard, and he had scarcely slept except for short bursts of vivid nightmares. But he had made it through and by the end his blood had not felt so icy and his magic no longer felt strained and reaching. He had even helped Wanda through a basic transfiguration from the spellbook he’d given her. He found he could draw on his magic without it feeling bruised and lacking. Even this temporary separation was working to tease apart their magics.

“It’s better.” He can feel it now on Thor’s return; he’s deeply glad to see his brother, but does not feel the overwhelming urge to weave their powers together.

Thor smiles and kisses his forehead. “Good. That’s good.” 

Despite it no longer feeling horrible to separately, the relief at being reunited is still sweet. 

Bruce is stunned when faced with the Wakandan technologies. His face-to-face friendship with Jane begins with a few minutes of mutual gushing over their comparative bodies of work. Shuri he receives with excited awe at her enthusiasm, and together the three of them make more progress than before. 

Days pass by, while the scientists putter around in their lab. Steve introduces Thor to Bucky (and the goats). Loki immerses himself in learning more about the politics of Earth, including the Accords that Thor had held back from him. Though the details make his palms sweat, he learns much, and feels he is far more prepared to navigate the streams of Midgardian power than when he landed, broken and weak, in the Avengers’ backyard.

Things settle into a bit of a routine, though they know it will not last long. The date of their retrieval of Vision draws ever closer, and the scientists grow closer and closer to success. They lurch forward towards their goals, feeling filled with determination and burning energy. Lithuania was a place of repose, but Wakanda is a place of _purpose_. They recover, just a bit more. 

One morning, Loki stumbles across Bruce having a quiet conversation with Natasha. It can tell it is strained, maybe even a little sad, and he turns to go. But his footsteps make a noise and startle them. 

“Morning,” Natasha says with a smile. 

“I’m sorry for interrupting, I’ll just-”

“No, no, it’s fine, ah,” Natasha clears her throat. “I was just going. I’ll leave you to it.”

“See you around, Nat.”

“Yeah, Bruce. I’ll see you around.” She leaves them alone. 

“What was that about?” 

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.” Bruce runs his fingers through his hair. “I just sent for Thor, he should be here in a minute. You’ll want to hear this.” 

When Thor arrives, Bruce pulls up a display of the transmitter he’s been constructing. “I think I’ve finally got the programming right, and using the new power source is making everything much more stable.”

“Is that a good thing?” Thor asks. 

“It means I think I’m almost done.” 

Loki taps his fingers nervously against the white table. “Do you think this is going to work?”

“I just need to run one more test, and then we’ll find out. It will be a matter of min - Oh.” Bruce checks a readout. “Okay, hours. Sorry. But soon, if you want to stick around.” 

Loki nods, and settles back into his seat. Thor goes to check on Jane’s work, returning soon with T’Challa. 

“How goes it with Jane?” Loki asks.

“Well. She’s making good progress. I fixed some of her assumptions that were throwing off her calculations, but I think she’ll have it from here.” Thor sits at the table. “And Bruce?” 

“Still testing.” 

The tests go on for a while longer, Bruce occasionally muttering under his breath and typing at a computer. Loki listens, with amusement and a tinge of longing, while Thor tells T’Challa about one of the Valkyrie’s particularly entertaining exploits with the Sakaarans. 

“So there are really Valkyrie?” Shuri asks, wide eyed. She’s looked up from her computer, so she must be truly interested in this conversation. “The woman you speak of? That is not just a name? Valkyries are real? Winged horses and everything? That’s real too?”

“Yes,” Thor says. “Though she is the only one remaining.” 

“Huh,” Shuri says. “Fascinating.”

“Though, can we really call her a Valkyrie?” 

“Loki!” Loki looks up from where he had been listing at the table, surprised at Thor’s sudden reprimand. “Why would you say that? Why would you deny her place as a Valkyries?”

“Well if she’s serving as Queen of Asgard, is she really a Valkyrie?” There’s a beat of silence. 

“Wait,” Bruce rubs his face. “Okay. How do you know they made her queen?” 

“Well, of course I don’t _know_ ,” Loki says. “But it would be the only thing that made sense.” He looks to Thor for support. “Heimdall’s never been one for the spotlight, he wouldn’t take the throne even if the people insisted. He’ll keep to the role he’s always played, quiet governance. But they’ll see her as a figurehead. A figure of legend, one of the oldest things on that ship, not only closest to us, but one of the last people who had had actual face-to-face contact with Odin and Frigga. She’ll be able to unite them around that and her image, around the symbols of the Valkyrie. With us presumed dead, they’ll make her queen.” 

“It does make sense,” Thor admits. “Perhaps I should have made it official, appointed her third in line.” 

“She would have refused it,” Loki says. “If you had asked her she would have cursed at you, and then probably stabbed you, and then gone off on a bender. We’d have found her at the bottom of a dumpster on some seedy planet three weeks later.” 

“She was perhaps not the most… _emotionally_ well adjusted person in the universe,” Thor remarks to T’Challa, who just nods faintly. 

“But if the people will it, and she’s grieving, she _might_ give in to sentiment and take up the crown. I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to give it back to you, once we contact her. That is,” Loki grins. “If they haven’t already given in to Korg’s wild plans and established a republic behind our backs.” Shuri barks a laugh, returning to her monitor. 

“I can picture it now,” Bruce says. He affects a thin mimicry of Korg’s voice. “‘Here lies King Thor and Prince Loki, last of the house of Odin…but have you thought of electing representatives to govern as a collective?” 

Loki puts a hand to his chest, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “Our bodies not even cold.”

“I am more concerned that your entire line of succession seems to enjoy stabbing you with alarming frequency,” T’Challa says to Thor. 

“Ah, but on Asgard, that’s how we say ‘I love you.’ Right, brother?” Thor grips Loki’s arms and roughly kisses the side of his head. 

Loki makes a face. “Keep it up, and I _will_ stab you.” Shuri and Bruce return to work while Thor tells T’Challa the story of the snake. 

Half an hour later, as the stories of the brutality of Asgardian affection grow more and more humorous, they are ground to a halt by the computer making a happy little _bing!_

Bruce checks it. “The test worked. Yes! It _worked_. Fuck. It worked!” 

“Well done,” Loki smiles. “Congratulations on your accomplishment, Dr. Banner.” 

“Yes! Okay, now time for a live test. Remember, keep it short, as we figure out how much data we can transfer at this distance.” 

Thor’s heart is in his throat as he types out a brief message. “Anything I should add?” He asks Loki. Loki skims it over his shoulder.

“I think that should do it.” 

“Ready?” Thor nods and Bruce types into the computer. “Okay, here goes.”   
  


“Quill! Val! Yo, you’re needed on the Ark,” Rocket’s voice comes over the loudspeaker. 

“What do you think they want?” Peter asks her as they enter the bridge between the ships. 

“I don’t know.”

“Sounded serious.” 

“Could be nothing.” But on the other hand, if could be _something_ , a clue to Thanos’s trail. They’d been smarting ever since their last failed expedition to Xandar, where they had only found death and destruction and no leads. 

Heimdall is on the ship’s bridge. “We’ve received a communication. It’s slow to come through, but it seems urgent.” 

“Can you tell where the message is coming from?” She asks. 

“It appears that it is coming from Earth.” 

“Earth?! Midgard? Really?” Valkyrie’s brow furrows. “ _What?_ ” Peter looks stunned.

The message takes a long time to load. When the transfer is complete the text appears on the screen, just a few lines of black writing.

“They’re alive,” Heimdall says, astonished. “They’re _alive_.” 

Valkyrie is grinning wide. “And I’m going to _fucking_ kill them,” She says even as relieved tears fill her eyes. 

“We just got a message from _Earth?_ ” Peter whistles. “Ho-ly shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Endgame, right? I'm not going to say anything further, partially to avoid spoiling it for people who haven't gotten to see it yet and partially because you can find...a lot of my opinions on my tumblr, if you really want to know how I felt. All I'll say is I'm excited to start outlining the concluding chapter to this narrative, now that I know what I want to steal and what I want to pretend never happened from Endgame! (It turns out I don't think I'm going to steal much - I had such a specific idea about where I wanted this AU to end up going in that a lot of Endgame turned out to be not quite so relevant. But there were a couple moments where I was like 'oh, filing that away!' And the opportunities for just...so many more AUs. So. Many. More. :D ) 
> 
> Remember back when I said that ['22. Friendly Fire'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16473503/chapters/39153076) in 'pain and other human sensations' was only relevant for the foreshadowing? It's possible it's slightly more relevant than I thought. So if you skipped it you might want to give it a skim. ;-) 
> 
> Comments are lovely, [come bother me on tumblr if you wish](https://bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com/), have a good week, etc, etc. ;-)


	8. Part II: Preparations; or, Guests in the Kingdom of Wakanda (3/3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a parting of the ways, and the beginning of the end. The Valkyrie and Peter Quill encounter an otherworldly figure who might know something about the fate of Gamora and progress creeps forward in Wakanda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I mentioned in the endnotes of the last chapter, if you skipped [chapter 22 "Friendly Fire"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16473503/chapters/39153076) in 'pain, and other human sensations' you may want to revisit it, as it became more important than I realized when I made the guide to the abridged plot version. I originally said it was only important for foreshadowing, but I had no idea where I was going at the time. ;-)

It’s cold and drizzling in Edinburgh, but that does not stop people from walking about the old streets in the deepening darkness of early evening, tourists taking photos of the ancient buildings, locals laughing on their way to the pubs. Wanda sits on the bench they’ve designated as a meeting spot, jumping at shadows.

“It’s alright,” Natasha’s voice says in her ear. “You’ve got to relax.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay, just try not to look so conspicuous.”

“Got it. I am just nervous.” She glances at police officers walking past, but they’re chatting with each other and barely glance at her.

“Wanda.” The voice comes from behind and instantly relaxes her. She turns, rising from the bench.

“Vis, thank God.” She throws her arms around him and he embraces her back.

“I have missed you so much,” He says. He kisses her. “I’ve already checked into the hotel, but if you’d like we could get dinner-”

“Vis, there’s no time. We have to go.”

Vision’s brow furrows. “Go? Go where?”

“You’re in danger, there’s something coming for you. We have to go. I don’t have time to explain here. We’re not safe.” She pulls on his arm, tugging him towards the train station.

“Wanda, wait-”

“We don’t have-”

They barely have time to duck as a blast takes out the shop window behind them.  


Loki moves swiftly through the halls. He pushes open the double doors to the room where Thor and T’Challa are watching the video feed of the rescue - or kidnapping, depending on one’s point of view - of Vision in Scotland on a large screen.

“What happened?” He asks.

“They’ve been attacked,” Thor says grimly.

Loki takes a steadying breath. “Ross?”

“We are not sure yet,” T’Challa responds.

Okoye enters. “Any progress?”

“Not yet. They are still fighting and we have not identified the attackers yet.”

“I told you I should have gone with them.”

Another second later, the image clarifies, the camera capturing one clear picture of their attackers.

Loki’s mouth goes dry.

“Not Ross,” He says. He has to grip the back of the chair to steady himself. “It’s Thanos.”

Despite the initial panic, it becomes clear that it is not Thanos himself, finally arrived on Earth, but instead an advanced crew, sent to capture the Mind Stone. It is made up of only Proxima Midnight and her monstrous spouse, and a few Chitauri foot soldiers.

They are beaten back by Steve, Sam, and Natasha, and Wanda’s fiery red magic. The train station is in ruins, covered in shattered glass, and they do not manage to kill or capture any of their attackers, but they escape. Proxima Midnight vanishes, retreats. Vision is wounded, limping, but they get him back into the quinjet and fly swiftly back to Wakanda. It could have gone better, but it also could have been far, far worse.

“Are you excited?” Shuri asks Loki, as they’re all waiting in her lab waiting for the arrival of the jet.

“Excited is not perhaps the word I would use to describe what I feel.” He glances at her. She’s giving him an odd look. “I’m honestly not that thrilled at being in the presence of the Mind Stone again. It is not a…pleasant object. Though I’m sure,” He clarifies quickly. “I will have nothing against its vessel.”

“Oh. Well, I cannot wait to get a look at this mess.”

“Yeah, we weren’t exactly at our best back then,” Bruce says as he approaches them. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”

“What do you plan to do about Thor’s magic?” Loki asks.

“Do you really think it’s that much of a contributing factor?”

“It might be, I don’t know. It’s simply something to consider.”

“Come on, Loki, you know how I feel about magic.”

Loki’s mouth twitches. “Sorry.”

“They are here,” T’Challa calls.

Loki hangs back as Vision is brought into the lab, heavily supported between Steve and Sam. He watches carefully, studying the being. His aura feels quite odd - pulsing with the power of the Mind Stone, staticky with something reminiscent of Thor’s magic, but with no other human elements. Just mechanics and circuitry. Nonetheless, he moves in pain, and he smiles with warmth when he sees Thor.

“It is good to see you,” Vision says. “Though I have heard that condolences are in order, your majesty.”

Thor grimaces, but extends a hand. “It has been a long road, but I am glad to see you again, my friend. And I hope we may be of some help.” Thor’s gaze goes to the Mind Stone and Loki can read what he’s thinking so clearly he has to check that he has not inadvertently used magic to read his brother’s mind.

 _We’re in more danger than ever before, in the presence of the Stone. Here we are, in the blast zone, should Thanos finally show his face_. At the thought of the last time he was in such close proximity to an Infinity Stone, Loki suddenly wants to run. He barely manages to stuff down the impulse. They help Vision into a chair and start by bandaging up his torn shoulder. Then Shuri starts taking readings, projecting the results onto the wall.

“These synapses are going to be a problem. We’ll have to entirely reprogram them, trillions of them. It will take time. A lot of time.”

T’Challa nods. “Get started as soon as possible. Do we have any idea how much longer we have?”

Thor shakes his head. “Valkyrie has been seeking Thanos, but all of their trails turn cold. They do not know whether he has gotten the location of the Soul Stone.”

“I am concerned that he felt sure enough to send an advance crew after the Mind Stone,” Loki says. “But we can’t know for certain how long we have.”

“They’ll keep looking for signs of Thanos. But we should expect the worst.”

“Our war dogs can keep watch for the advance crew. We will keep scanning the skies but it seems as though they have retreated for now.”

Thor nods. “Good.”

“And I will start trying to remove the Mind Stone,” Shuri says.

“What about the magic issue? Loki?” Bruce asks.

Vision raises an eyebrow. “Magic?”

“The final step, back during Ultron, was Thor’s magic. We can’t see any evidence on the readings, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there, considering our equipment isn’t really calibrated to pick up on something like that. Right, Loki?”

Loki nods. “It’s possible there’s a lingering effect that won’t make itself known until after you begin your work. Do you recall what you did?”

Thor looks somewhat sheepish. “No.” Loki cannot help but roll his eyes. “Not _precisely_. I do not think it will have as much an effect as you fear. It was just lightning - just the same as any other electric current.”

“As I have _tried_ to explain to you, time and time again-”

“Loki.” Thor’s voice is low and warning. “I swear-” The others look between them with some amusement.

“It is _not_ the same,” Loki explains. “It never has been. It contains bits of your magic in it and that can leave traces. It could be the glue holding the Mind Stone to the circuitry. If Shuri tries to reprogram it and comes across your magic, it could be over in an instant.”

“I’d prefer that not to happen,” Wanda says firmly.

“And I’m not looking forward to having all my work undone by _magic_.” Shuri crosses her arms.

“You know what this means, right?” Bruce says. Suddenly, Loki is aware of all their eyes on him.

He folds his arms across his chest. He should have seen how he was talking himself into a trap. “What makes you think that I will be able to fix it?”

“You might at least be able to tell us a little bit more about what’s going on in there,” Bruce says. “Maybe even get the separation started?”

“You want me to _purposely_ dive into the Mind Stone in an effort to tease apart the magics binding it to this form?” Loki frowns. “I’m not sure-”

“Just try,” Bruce says gently.

Loki’s throat bobs as he swallows. “I don’t know if…”

“I certainly will not hold it against you if you fail,” Vision says with a half smile.

“Brother,” Thor whispers. “If you cannot…”

Loki steels himself“I can try.” He takes a deep breath and steps forward. As he gets closer, he can feel the edges of the Stone’s power, wafting in an aura about a yard from the Vision’s body. He sits patiently and horrifyingly calm in the hospital chair. Loki’s hand shakes as he extends it, reaches for his seidr-

And lurches back. The sudden contact with the magic of the Mind Stone stings and it becomes too much. Nausea rises, he just manages to keep his feet long enough to make it back into the main part of the lab, collapsing to his hands and knees to be sick into a waste bin. After a moment, he feels Thor’s hands pull back his hair from his face and gather it in one hand, the other resting on his back. There’s the sound of a sliding door shutting. His stomach flips and he retches.

Thor rubs his back. “Evidently, that won’t work.”

“We will have to do things the slow way,” T’Challa’s calm voice comes from somewhere above him. “And hope that the magics will not affect the extraction too badly. Bruce will have to continue to split his time between the two projects.”

“I am sorry,” Loki groans. His stomach spasms again, bringing up only bile. “I can’t…it’s still…I can feel it…” He’s on the edge of dissolving entirely, bitter tears in his eyes.

“Hush, brother,” Thor says. “It was good of you to try.”

“ _Norns_ , I can still feel it pulling on me,” He sits back, shaking hard. “Pulling on my mind, it’s going to pull me apart-”

“It won’t,” Thor says firmly. He rubs Loki’s back in a wide circle. “Shhh, it won’t. Just breathe.”

“Would fresh air help? Fresh air and…distance?” T’Challa suggests.

Thor looks back to him. “Would it?” Loki nods. Thor helps him to his feet, lingers close by as T’Challa shows them to the exit. Loki leans on the railing of the balcony as far as he can go, sucking in air like he was drowning. Thor keeps a steadying hand on his back. “It’s alright.”

Loki slowly calms, his racing heart settling into a normal pulse. “I am sorry, that I couldn’t-” He shudders.

“It is nothing,” Thor says quietly. “This was the plan all along. Nothing has been altered.”

“Yes.” Loki takes a deep breath. “It would have perhaps made their job easier, separated the Stone quicker but…”

Thor takes him back to the conference room, hovering anxiously while T’Challa distracts them with strategy for defense. Loki waves them off after a little while, insisting that the nausea - and the wild panic that clouded his thoughts, unravelled him at the seams - has receded. Thor and T’Challa return to the lab to check on Shuri and Bruce’s progress, leaving Loki in the conference room.

He feels useless. More than useless, pathetically helpless in his inability to focus long enough to help with his magic. The Mind Stone will likely forever haunt him, working on the weak parts of his mind, seeking to invade, turn him into a shell-

His thoughts start to spin and he forcibly has to drag himself back from the edge. He sighs, and buries his face in his hand. He is perched on the edge of the table, facing the large board where they’ve detailed what they know about the Infinity Stones and their locations. He glances back up at it, dread settling in a pool in his stomach as he sees where they’ve crossed off the ones Thanos holds in his possession.

Power - Thor’s pained howls echoing in his ears.

Space - the dizzying power of the Tesseract, sweeping them away and draining his power.

Reality - the Aether, drifting on dusty wasteland, shielding Jane from it’s amorphous scarlet power. The scar on his chest throbs.

He curses in four languages and strikes out with his magic, sending a glass of water from the table to shatter against the wall. It doesn’t make him feel any better.

They are halfway to doom. Half the stones in Thanos’s control now. He turns his attention to the other side of the board. They have two under their protection, and hopefully can destroy Mind before it’s too late. The final Stone remains a mystery. Soul. Missing for centuries. But did Gamora find it? Thanos certainly seemed to think so. If he has her, how long can she hold out before she caves and gives up the location?

The idea comes to him in a flash. A way to be useful, to perhaps get one more Stone under their control.

Loki holds out his hands, reaches into his dimensional pocket and conjures a book. It’s black and stained - he doesn’t remember what he had spilled on it, but it seems particularly damaging. Hopefully the spell he seeks has not been ruined.

“What’s that?” Wanda asks from the doorway.

“A spell book. One much more advanced than the one I gave you.”

She comes to sit at the table. “What are you looking for?”

“A scrying spell, that can reach across vast distances. It will be challenging, I'll have to break through time and space to conjure what I'm looking for. Why are you not in the lab?”

“They are taking a break. Shuri says she needs to run some tests, simulations. Vision is helping Bruce with something. I came to see if you were alright.”

“Oh. Yes. Fine, thank you.” He finds the page he was looking for - the edges only slightly charred - and skims it. “I apologize I cannot be more helpful with the Mind Stone, and Vision. But I can do this.” He taps the page. “I can find the Soul Stone.”

He explains the essentials of the spell to Wanda. With her and the palace guards’ help, Loki gathers the necessary materials. They set it up on the table, and Loki carves the runes.

“I thought you said you couldn’t see the future?”

“I can’t. Not without spells like this one. I am no seer. Seers - like Thor and our mother - can see the future naturally, without the assistance of magic, though the visions are often confused and unfocused without it. And even with a spell like this it will not be perfectly precise. Unfortunately, at this distance, I will not be able to know many of the specifics - whether this is in the past or future, where it is taking place. Unless I get extremely lucky and there is some clue in the vision itself. But if I focus, I might be able to figure out what Thanos knows about the Stone.” When it is all assembled, he takes a deep breath. “I need one final thing.”

“What is it?”

“A thread of your magic.”

Wanda frowns. “Why?”

“I need an anchor to the Stone. Obviously, I do not have the Soul Stone and I cannot get close enough to the real Mind Stone to use it, but all of the Infinity Stones were forged in the same fire, and your power was grown from that energy.” She still hesitates. “It will not be much. If you are imaging what happened when we were Lithuania when I drew upon Thor’s magic, I assure you, it is entirely different. But I will not do this without your consent. The spell will still be possible, but it will be much harder and I might trigger the wrong kind of vision, of another time-”

“Alright. If you swear…”

“Watch.” He has Wanda hold out her hand and taps the center of her palm. A small wisp of red light swirls up. Loki twirls his finger and the light spins into a small ball, no larger than a marble. Gold light sparkles among the red. “The gold is the magic of the Mind Stone. That’s what will focus the vision.” He waves his hand and the marble settles at the center of their circle. “See? It is completely separate from your own power now, there is no danger.”

“Ah. Alright.” She studies the marble with some curiosity. “What else should I do?”

“Just watch. And wait.” Loki closes his eyes, taking a deep breath and drawing upon his magic.

He just breathes, for several long moments. He whispers the words of the spell and at the appropriate break, holds the magic of the Stones in his mind. It’s not enough to get the exact moment he needs to see, he knows. Heart thudding dully against his ribs, he goes a step farther and draws the image of Thanos into his mind.

Memories flood through him, memories of pain that he has long tried to shove down. Nausea rises but he pushes through, allowing himself to feel it all again. The fear, the pain, the desperation. He uses the horrifying pain of his torture at Thanos’s hands as a secondary anchor to the spell. He feels the magic growing, strengthening. The emotions are an even stronger anchor than the trace amounts of the Mind Stone present in Wanda’s magic and they amplifies the power of the spell tenfold.

 _Where is the Soul Stone?_ He asks in an old language of magic. He takes another deep breath. _Where is the Soul Stone?_

Sensation bleeds away and then he is standing on Sanctuary. He hears screams, crackling electricity. It sounds horrifyingly familiar and for a moment he thinks he’s made a mistake and conjured only the past image of his own torture. But the voice screaming is not his own.

It’s Nebula.

The image coalesces. Nebula strung up on wires, the mechanical parts of her pulled apart. Thanos stands, the gauntlet on his massive fist. He’s not looking at Nebula as he makes her scream.

He’s looking at Gamora. Her face is screwed up, eyes downcast. Every muscle in her body is taunt with tension.

Loki feels sick. If he could vomit in the vision, he would. _T_ _his must be a favored tactic of his_ , he thinks bitterly. The vision wavers but he focuses and it stabilizes.

The screams increase in pitch. Thanos’s fist clenches tighter.

“Vormir!” Gamora gives in with a cry. “The Stone is on Vormir.” She lets out a desperate sob. Thanos relaxes his fist. He smiles.

The spell’s energy dissolves and the vision with it. Loki blinks his eyes open on Wakanda. Dark spots float in his vision, and his head spins. He tastes blood, feels it dripping from his nose and running from his ears. He feels hollowed out, magic used up in the quest to conjure the vision. But he did it.

He smiles and his knees nearly buckle. He catches himself on the edge of the table and manages to sink into a chair before he falls.

Through a buzzing sound, he hears Wanda calling, “What did you do? Loki, _what did you do?_ ”

Loki wipes the blood from under his nose, but it still flows. “I found it. Soul. I found the Soul Stone.” Wanda hands him a cloth, helps him press it to his face to try and slow the nosebleed. “Vormir.”  
    

The messages they receive from Earth make a soft little ‘ _bing!_ ’ when they arrive. The _bing!_ startles Valkyrie out of contemplation.

“Hey! We’ve got another one.” She pulls it up on the screen.

“What is it?” Peter comes up behind her, leaning over the back of the chair to read the message. “Shit.”

“They found the Soul Stone.”

“How?” Heimdall asks.

“Loki cast a spell. They say they can’t be sure whether the vision he had was from the past or the future, but…” Valkyrie hesitates, glancing at Peter. “They say it showed Gamora telling Thanos where the Soul Stone was.”

“She wouldn’t…she wouldn’t just give it up.” Peter runs his hand through his hair. He glances at Rocket, who looks down and shakes his head. “Come on, it’s Gamora. She’s the strongest of all of us, she’s not just-”

“They said Thanos tortured someone named Nebula?”

Peter slumps a bit. Nods. “Her sister.”

“Okay,” The Valkyrie sits back in her chair. “We have to go to Vormir.”

“I agree,” Peter says quickly.

“What are you two smoking? Are you kidding? Gamora’s been missing for weeks, this has probably already happened. Don’t you think this might be a trap?”

“For who, Rocket? Us? Thanos left us behind on Knowhere, he doesn’t give a shit about us. He’s not going to just sit around and wait for us on _Vormir_.”

“But it’s possible that this vision is from the recent past,” The Valkyrie says. “Or maybe even the future. And even if they did make it to Vormir, maybe they haven’t left. Maybe he hasn’t found the Stone. I mean,” She pulls up a screen on Vormir. “It’s pretty big. And desolate. There have been rumors of ghosts and monsters there for centuries. Some traders landed on Sakaar a couple decades ago that had been to Vormir and they seemed spooked as all hell. Talking of phantoms and curses. Maybe that’s the Stone, hiding itself. Even with the others, maybe, just maybe, he hasn’t gotten it yet.”

“I have heard these odd rumors as well,” Drax says. “People say that there is great treasure on Vormir, but no one has survived trying to obtain it.”

“There’s no way he’ll know we figured out it was Vormir. If we can beat him there, or catch him looking for the stone…we might be able to catch him by surprise,” Valkyrie says. “And I think it’s time for us to split up.”

“Yes,” Peter says just as Rocket cries, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“My lady,” Heimdall says carefully. “I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”

“It’s the only idea. We can’t risk the Asgardian survivors on this kind of mission.”

“And some of us have to keep going to Titan.”

“So Quill and I go to Vormir,” The Valkyrie says. “The rest of the Guardians go to Titan. You keep on track to Earth.”

“My lady, what about Nidavellir? They said that we should make for Nidavellir.”

“We’ll stay in contact. Depending on who’s done first, us or the Guardians, will head to Nidavellir. I don’t think that it makes sense to drag the people to the Dwarves, especially when we don’t know what we’re walking into there. The safest thing for the civilians is to keep on the original plan.”

“So we shall simply continue towards Earth?”

The Valkyrie nods. “You’ll keep the people safe, and off of Thanos’s radar.”

“Without you?” Heimdall does not look pleased.

“Yes.”

“My lady, you are our queen.”

“I am not the _fucking_ queen though,” She shouts. “Queen of the Dead, whatever, that’s all _bullshit_. Especially now. Thor’s alive, so he’s back to being king. I’ve never been the queen, Heimdall. I’m not cut out for it. I’m cut out for this.” She gestures at Peter. “I have to go.”

Heimdall sighs. “I understand. I do not like it, but I understand.”

A few hours later, they’ve divided up supplies among the three groups, packed up weapons and personal effects, and synced up communications so they’ll all receive the messages from Earth. And they’re ready to go.

While Peter says his goodbyes, the Valkyrie and Heimdall wait.

“I know that this likely goes without saying, given my earlier comments,” He smiles. “But do take care of yourself. And keep in touch. We’ve suffered too much.”

“Not as much loss as we thought, though. Thor and Loki are alive, you’ll catch up to them sooner or later. Don’t need me anymore.”

“You know that’s not true.”

She does. She’s been trying to put it out of her mind, but she knows. Even before she became the reluctant queen of the remnants of Asgard, they had needed her - Thor to help him rule, the people as a symbol and a source of history alike. And since, she has long noted the way that the old women invite her their circles, how young warriors-to-be, both male and female, seek her out for advice, how the children sometimes need to feel protected so they flock around her through celestial storms and dangerous passings. It’s something, to feel needed. She’s never really been needed. As a Valkyrie she was always one of a collective, stronger together than as individuals. And on Sakaar, being _favored_ was different than being _needed_.

There’s a tightness in her throat.

Instead of saying anything about this, she says, “You’re going to be a better steward that I’ve ever been. I’m shit.” Because that’s true too.

“You’re not. Truly, Brunnhilde. You’ve been a good leader. I hope you will keep that in mind. Keep _us_ in mind.”

“I will.” She finishes buckling on her vambraces. “I know you think I’m running, that this is me fleeing. I’m not. I swear, I will be back. Once this is all over. I’m not running anymore.”

Heimdall nods solemnly. “I will welcome you back when you return. I will welcome you all back.”

They clasps hands, and then she turns her back on Asgard and boards the Milano.

“I am Groot.”

“Come on, don’t be like that,” Peter says softly. “I’ll be back. We’ll see you on Nidavellir.”

“I am Groot.”

“I know,” Peter sighs.

“He is right,” Drax voice grumbles. “You had better come back, Quill.”

“We will miss you,” Mantis throws her arms around Peter’s neck. He smiles.

“Yeah, yeah. Take care of my ship, Rocket.”

Rocket looks away awkwardly. “Take care of yourself, Quill.”

“We should go,” Valkyrie interrupts. “It’s a long flight to Vormir.”

Peter says his final goodbyes to his team and the two of them bundle themselves into the tight pod. They disengage the pod and float away - watching as the Ark and the Milano split and each go off on their own ways. The Ark, lumbering towards Earth, the Milano, disappearing into the jump point towards Titan.

The flight to Vormir is quiet for the first few hours. Peter is gripping the controls a little too tightly, lines around his mouth deepening.

“What are you thinking?” Valkyrie asks him.

He glances at her sidelong. “Nothin’. Just can’t believe we’re finally on a real lead. We might actually catch up to the bastard.”

“What are you going to do if we find the worst?”

Peter doesn’t answer for a few long moments. “When he took her, he made me think I’d killed her. She asked me to do it, didn’t want to live through whatever he had planned for her. He let me think…then just used that fucking gauntlet and took her anyways. So yeah, I don’t know what I’m going to do, if it’s the worst. I can’t think about it.”

The Valkyrie nods. “Alright. One step at a time.” Privately, she knows what they’re going to find on Vormir. But maybe that’s just because all the hope was burned out of her when Hela slaughtered the Valkyries. And then the embers crushed when Thanos destroyed the original Ark.

Two hyperspace jumps and they are in Vormir’s quadrant. It looms before them, dark and foreboding. There is no signs of any life, no civilization, no satellites. Just the gray planet, dust and ruins.

They enter the atmosphere and do a loop. Still nothing.

“That rocky outcropping,” Valkyrie points out. “The towers, by the ravine. I think we should start there.”

“Why?” Peter asks. “I don’t see any signs. Why there?”

“I just think we should go there.” Something is pulling her towards it. She’s trying to ignore the feeling, stubbornly telling it _no, no, you’re all wrong, I’m no witch_. But there is something inexplicable, tugging on her heart and telling her to land in front of the towering rock.

They land the craft and lower the ramp. When they step out - Valkyrie’s hand resting on her sword, and Peter’s gun loose in one hand - onto the dusty, dark planet, she is deeply unnerved by the eery silence.

“I already know why those traders talked of ghosts,” She says. “This place already feels haunted.”

 _Welcome, Brunnhilde_ , a deep, echoing feminine voice says in her ear. She whirls around but no one is there. The voice is familiar, yet she cannot place it.

“This place is really freaking me out. You too.”

“I thought I heard someone. But it’s nothing.”

“Thanos? Or…?”

“No. It’s not. It was…” It comes to her. The giantess from her vision, her dream prompted by the Ravager’s odd weapon. The guardian of the road to Hel. “Someone I knew once.” Her heart beats as loud as thunder. She knows for sure now that the deep feeling in her chest was not an invention. There’s that tug on her heart again. “This way.”

“Oh-kay…” But Peter follows her without hesitation. They climb up a winding path. It levels out, and bends around a curve. The Valkyrie isn’t at all surprised when she finds the giantess, sitting at her fire, the raven perched on her shoulder.

“Welcome, back.”

The raven squawks. “Brynhild, dead queen.”

“Is that all you can say?” She scoffs at the raven.

“Who they hell are you guys?” Peter asks, gun raised.

The giantess merely smiles. “You don’t need to know who I am, Peter Quill.”

“Is Frigga around here somewhere? She come back to give me another muddled and confusing, cursed fucking prophecy? I did it all, didn’t I? I became the Queen of the Dead, I ruled over Asgard like you two wanted.”

“The Witch Queen is elsewhere.”

Valkyrie snorts. “Feasting in Valhalla, I imagine.”

“Valhalla…?” Peter raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

The giantess ignores him. “It was not what we wanted. It was what you were fated.”

“But I don’t need to be the queen anymore, if Thor and Loki are still alive. They’ll return to take up the throne. So what now? Here to call me out on more of my faults.”

“You remember your crimes well enough, my lady. No. I am here to warn you and your companion.” The giantess looks away from her fire. Her eyes are very, very dark, the iris almost entirely swallowed by the pupil. The wind sweeps past them, sending a chill up the Valkyrie’s spine. “What lies at the end of the path is only misery. I am not here to tell you to turn back, because you cannot. You can only go forwards, to suffering.”

Valkyrie feels a swell of rage. “You absolute bitch.” Peter looks pale and horrified at her side. He’s not used to the creepy, mysterious air favored by Yggdrasil’s sorcerers and mystics.

“I mean it, my lady. Captain. You must move forward. You will be here again. There will be pain, so much pain. But it cannot be avoided.”

“If it can’t be…” Peter frowns. “What’s the point of the freakin’ warning?”

“Don’t bother asking, Peter, there’s never any point for witches’ warnings-”

“You might save the Universe.” The giantess levels them with her stare. “Not alone. And not in time. But you might save the Universe. And there is no path forward but the knowing.” The path ahead through the rock is suddenly illuminated by faint orange light. “You must go forward.”

“Okay. Great. Okay. Forward. Got it. Whew.” Peter takes a deep breath and hesitantly, like he is expecting an attack, starts down the path.

“Farewell, Brunnhilde. Until we meet again.”

“Right,” She says. The raven squawks when she passes. “Bye, you stupid bird.” And she follows Peter down the path.

The path, after winding through the rock, emerges onto a wide, flat platform. Beyond, the cliff drops off. The plains are flat and grey. The sky roils angrily above them. Peter holds his weapon at the ready.

“ _Wilkommen_ ,” A voice says. The figure appears, a swirling mass of black fabric and smoke. The face that speaks is scarlet, skeletal. “Welcome. Brunnhilde, daughter of Asgard. Peter, son of Meredith.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Peter glances back at Valkyrie but she shrugs.

“I am the guardian of this place. What do you seek?”

“We seek the Soul Stone,” The Valkyrie says. The figure is silent for a long time, studying them. Perhaps seeing if they were worthy of the Stone?

“I am afraid you are too late.” Her stomach sinks.

“No,” Peter breathes. “ _Shit_ , come on.”

“The one called Thanos has come and gone.”

“With the Stone?” The figure nods. “Shit. Shit. _Fuck_.” Valkyrie has the sudden urge to kick something, but the rock ledge is smooth, nothing that would be satisfying to destroy.

“Do you know where he went?” Peter asks. “Where he was going?” The figure shakes his head. “Dammit, you’ve got to know something, this is our only lead,” Peter cries in desperation.

“I am sorry, travelers. All I know is that Thanos came seeking the Stone. He paid the price, rested a while, and then went on his way.”

“What was the price?” The Valkyrie asks. She’s hopeful for a second that the cost will have been sufficient enough to weaken him. But then the giantess’s voice in her ear. _What lies at the end of the path is only misery_.

“A sacrifice.” _Oh no_.

“What kind of sacrifice?” She asks the question but does not want to know the answer.

“A soul.” The figure gestures at the ravine.

They make their way to the edge.

A form is crumpled, limp at the bottom of the cliff. There’s the wet pool of blood expanding from the body.

“No,” Peter cries. “No, no, no.” She chases after him as he finds the path down, scrambling and nearly falling in his desperation to get to the bottom of the cliff.

When they arrive at the bottom, the figure and the blood is gone. There is only an expanse of smooth stone.

“What?” Peter gasps around tears and the threat of sobs. “What the _hell?_ You saw her didn’t you? You saw her, she was right here!” Valkyrie had seen it. She had never seen Gamora in person, only photographs aboard the Milano. But the mass of red hair and smooth green skin were distinctive, even at a distance. It had been her and now her body was inexplicably gone, in the time it had taken them to scramble down the cliff face. “Where is she? Where the hell did she go?”

The figure is back, floating across the stone.

“There was one with Thanos when he came. His daughter. The Stone required a sacrifice. It grieved him deeply, but his will was strong. He cast her from the cliff and in return the Stone revealed itself to him. It recognized that he had sacrificed that which he truly loved-”

“That’s bullshit,” Peter snarls. “Fucking bullshit, he never loved her! He _abducted_ her and, and destroyed her planet, and tortured her. He called her his daughter but that’s _bullshit_. He murdered her parents, he forced her to kill for him. He never fucking loved her, he didn’t love any of his kids.”

“He thought he loved her. Perhaps you are right. I cannot name the emotion that he felt for her. Perhaps it was not truly love, but use. The Soul Stone cared not. It judged her death a worthy sacrifice.”

With a great cry of pain, Peter fires his weapon. The blast punches it’s way through the phantom, but the damage is reversed in an instant.

“You are too late. I am cursed to remain here in this form, until the end of the Universe. You cannot harm me.”

“Peter,” Valkyrie grabs his arm. “Peter, let’s go. We’ve got to go.”

“No. I can’t leave her-”

She forces him to turn around and look at her. “She’s gone. We were too late. We have to warn the others. Come on.”

They turn, leaving behind the phantom, who does nothing but watch them go, and the flat stone.

Aboard the pod, Peter sinks onto the bench, puts his head into his hands, and gives over to tears. The Valkyrie leaves him be, lets him mourn, and instead goes to the controls, prepping for takeoff. She will glad to be off this cursed planet. She understands now, the haunted look in the traders’ eyes, when they whispered of this place on Sakaar.

“We have to make for Nidavellir. It will take us some time. If we want to make it there before they’re ready to transport we should head straight there.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass anymore.”

“Hey!” Peter looks up at the Valkyrie’s sharp cry. “You heard what the bitch seeress said. This is going to fucking hurt. But we might be able to save the Universe. And don’t you want revenge?”

“Revenge?”

She smiles, a feral grin. “Let me tell you, it feels pretty fucking good.”

Peter blinks slowly and wipes at his cheek. “Yeah. Right.”

Valkyrie turns back to the controls. “We make for Nidavellir.”  


Loki sleeps like the dead the night after his vision, the drained magic giving him the best night’s sleep in recent memory. He wakes late in the morning, feeling restored. He finds Thor sitting outside in the sun.

“Good morning,” He says, startling Thor out of his reverie. Thor offers him a small smile.

“How are you feeling?”

“Much better. It was a momentary expenditure, nothing a night’s rest could not fix.” He brings sparkling green light to his fingertips as proof.

Thor smiles, but looks distant. “I’m glad one of us had a peaceful night. I admit, my sleep was disturbed.”

“As it has been for some time. Is there something additional bothering you?”

“No, no more than usual.” _Lie_ , Loki recognizes immediately. Thor can see it on his face. He clasps his shoulder, squeezing. “It’s nothing, brother. Don’t worry.”

Loki forces a smile. “Good. And yesterday was a good sign.”

“Loki,” Thor says, clearly fed up. “ _How_ was that a good sign, you were reckless, draining your magic-”

“It was the most stable spell I’ve done since escaping the Raft. And I was able to do it without drawing on your magic. And even when the Mind Stone nearly took me I did not draw on your magic. If not completely broken, the connection is at least closing. That is _good_.”

“Loki.”

“What?”

“That spell was irresponsible. You could have been hurt.”

“Then I would have been hurt. It is worth it, to defeat _him_ , don’t you agree?” Loki’s good mood is rapidly vanishing. “In this, I do not matter. I lay my magic down to defeat him, it would be a worthy sacrifice.”

“No. Haven’t you been listening at all? Loki, there is no worthy sacrifice for this. If you…” Thor grasps his shoulders. “If you are hurt, that is just one more tragedy, one more mark on his side. The way we win is to come out whole and I will tear apart the cosmos to do that.”

“Thor, you have to acknowledge-”

“No, brother. Yes, there is risk, but I will not allow you to come to harm.”

“What is it? Something’s wrong.”

“It’s nothing. Further nightmares.”

Loki grabs his wrist. “Tell me.” Thor looks away. Loki tugs on him.

“I had dinner with Jane last night, after I put you to bed. She says she’s close…but they still have not solved their energy problem. It is likely she can only send one body through the portal to Nidavellir. Anything else would risk the stability of the portal, and cripple Wakanda’s power grid. With the work that Shuri and Bruce are doing on Vision…”

“They can’t afford it.” Loki’s hands and face feel numb. “It makes sense. I told you, we would have to separate before the end.”

“I cannot. Especially when I cannot trust you not to be _reckless_ and when you speak of laying down your magic as a sacrifice-”

“Thor-”

“No. I have seen you die twice, Loki,” Thor says, tears brimming in his one eye. “I have seen you tortured and bound, and I cannot, I cannot _watch_ all of this again.”

“Well if we’re separated, you will not have to watch.”

“ _Loki!_ ” Thor shakes him. “Stop it.”

“How?” Loki gasps. “How am I supposed to stop? This is our reality. This has been my reality since the moment I let go of the staff and let myself fall between worlds. We have no other choice, we can’t keep ignoring this.” Loki searches his brother’s face. “Is that what brought this on? We are getting closer to our goals and you fear the outcome.”

“Yes.”

Loki’s next breath is unsteady. “You fear this is the end?” Thor says nothing in reply, but simply cups his neck and runs his thumb down Loki’s jawbone. “It might be. But we can’t run from it. They were right about one thing, Thanos and his minions when they took us. _Destiny arrives all the same_. I have come to terms with my possible death in all of this.”

“I have not. Have you come to terms with mine? Are you prepared for me not to return? Are you ready to be king of Asgard, should I fall to Thanos?” That brings Loki up short. In all honesty, he had not thought of it. He just assumed… “I suppose the look on your face answers my question.”

“Thor, I-” He assumed he would be the one to die. That was the rightful order of the universe, wasn’t it? He would die and Thor would wield his new axe to avenge his death. The thought of Thor dying in this mission - impossible.

“Now you understand, why I cannot bear the thought of going off, and leaving you here? Never seeing you again? Loki, I need you to promise me, that you will do everything in your power to _survive_ , if I leave you here.”

Loki nods, not trusting himself to speak. Thor doesn’t quite look satisfied, but he lets the conversation drop.  


From the window in the conference room, Natasha watches them on the balcony.

“Is it just me, or are they being grimmer than usual?” She asks Steve. He follows her gaze.

“They’ve been through a lot. And more to come.”

“Thor doesn’t think he’s going to survive this. Do you?”

Steve is very still. “I don’t know. I just know that if we don’t do anything to stop him, a lot more people are going to die. I’m not sure I can worry all that much about myself.”

“Well, don’t worry about that.” She gives him a small smile. “I can worry about you. You worry about me. And Sam worries about Wanda, and Wanda worries about Vision. That’s what a team’s for, right?”

Steve returns her smile. “Right.”  


Lightyears away, four stones sparkle in the gauntlet. Thanos studies them.

“I have missed Gamora, these years,” He says. “She was the perfect child. Skilled. Ruthless. But she allowed sentiment to cloud her vision. To muddle her thoughts.”

“Of course, sire,” Ebony Maw says. “It was a flaw of hers. Unfortunate that she had to die without correcting it.”

“Indeed. I could have won her around again. I could have reminded her of how right we are, how corrupted and weak the rest of the universe has become.” Thanos’s grief is being replaced by anger. “She was poisoned. Tainted. I could have cured her. But the Stone required a sacrifice and I could not…my will must be strong.”

“And it undoubtably is.”

Quietly, Thanos thinks of revenge. What he will do to the people who took his beloved daughter from him, to those who resisted his purifications and led to this tragedy. But first-

“I will do this in her name now.” He flexes the gauntlet and the stones glow. “Set course for Earth. I want all our forces at the ready.”

“Right away, sire.”  


Jane summons them in the early afternoon. “Okay. I have good news and bad news.” She says. “Which do you want first?” Loki sits in Jane’s desk chair, preparing himself for the worst.

Thor sighs. “I suppose the good news first?”

“I did it! I have a stable portal!”

Thor’s smile doesn’t quite make it to his eyes. “I knew you could do it.”

“Okay, I was expecting a little bit more enthusiasm, guys.”

“Jane, we are more than impressed by your intellect and your skill. Forgive me for not celebrating this feat as you deserve,” Thor smiles warmly. “I truly apologize. It is just that…I am of course apprehensive about moving forward.”

Jane glances at Loki. “Right,” She says gently.

“But we must. Thanos is moving ever closer. We need to act now. I assume the bad news is that you only have the power to send one person through?” Loki asks.

Jane nods to confirm his assumption. “And there won’t be any return trips, not unless we manage to get a crazy big power source in the next day or two.”

“If the axe works the way it was designed, you won’t need to worry about return trips. Even if it doesn’t, Valkyrie has a ship and should be on her way to Nidavellir now, so you won’t be stranded. How quickly can you be ready?”

“It’s ready now, technically,” Jane says. “I’d just need another hour or so to finish programming the coordinates.”

“Excellent,” Loki says, rising from the chair. His heart pounds sickly in his chest, misery worming it’s way through his stomach. But he keeps his expression still as he turns to Thor. “I expect you’ll want to begin saying goodbye to your friends, gathering your things-”

“ _Loki!_ ” Thor scrubs at his beard. “I can’t just…you-”

“What are you going to wait for? We have to act, you have to go. We’ve been planning this, for _days_ , we just talked about this, I thought you were ready-”

“Ready to leave in an hour?? Are you mad, brother?”

“Well, probably, but that doesn’t mean I’m not right about the need to act quickly, and the uselessness of wallowing. Do I need to fetch King T’Challa and Captain Rogers to help convince you?”

Thor seizes his arms roughly.

“I’ll just give you two a minute,” Jane says and quickly exits the lab.

“You know I’m right,” Loki says. “I thought we had discussed this. It’s not my fault you’re not ready.”

“ _Loki_ ,” Thor sighs. “Fine. You’re right; it is not your fault that I am not ready. But can you _cease_ being so callous for one minute and try to understand how I feel?”

“Callous?” Loki laughs through the lump in his throat. “Do you think I’m happy about this? Do you? You believe I’m thrilled at being _left behind_ here on this cursed planet? With mortal governments out for my blood and my only protection one country and a collection of fugitives? Do you not believe I have dreaded this as much as you have?” His vision swims. _Angry crier_ , he curses himself. The tear drips down his cheek.

Thor sighs. He releases his tight grip on his arms to wrap one hand around his neck instead.

“Thanos is coming, Thor. This is going to be painful, all of it. But it’s our only chance.”

“I know, brother. Twenty four hours. Give me one last night here. Can I convince you to agree to that?”

“Won’t it make it harder? Isn’t it just easier to go now, turn into the pain and get it over with?”

Thor shakes his head. “No. It’s not. If we’re not successful,” Loki makes a choked noise in his throat, remembering the way Thor had asked him if he was ready to be king. “And I cannot get back here, or the worst happens. I want one more night to enjoy the presence of my friends and thank them for what they have done for us. If you could go back and have one more night aboard the Ark, would you not do it?”

Loki blinks up at his brother. He remembers the warmth and quiet of the Ark, the calm release they would take, unwinding in the bar after a hard days work. And back farther. If he could have one more night on Asgard, to speak to his mother, even Sif and the Warrior’s Three, would he take it?

He knows his answer.

Loki nods. “Fine. Tomorrow.”

Thor smiles sadly and presses their foreheads together.

After the initial shock and fraught emotions, the scientists’ excitement is catching. Jane gathers the full contingent of their little band of resistance against Thanos to share the good news.

“Tomorrow?” Sam says, incredulous. “That’s crazy. But good right?”

Thor nods tightly. “We’re one step closer to beating back Thanos. And taking our revenge.” They discuss strategy for a while, making sure everyone is on the same page for the defense of Earth and the attempts to destroy the Stone. And then the party begins. It’s larger than the evenings they spent gathered around the fire in Lithuania, or the bar on the Ark, but it is a familiar camaraderie and, despite the lingering anxiety about his upcoming separation from Thor, Loki finds himself having _fun_. He still keeps his distance from Vision, and therefore Wanda, but spends time laughing and chatting with Shuri and Sam.

They retire late and Loki falls quickly to sleep with Thor snoring at his side.

Loki wakes gradually. It is still pitch black, but against the lights of the city filtering through the windows he can make out his brother’s silhouette. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, head in his hands.

“Are you alright?” He whispers.

“I’m fine,” Thor says. “Go back to sleep.” He doesn’t sound fine. Loki says as much. Thor hums in response.

“Did you have a dream?”

Thor sighs. “Yes.” Apprehension flutters in Loki’s stomach. He conjures a witchlight to softly illuminate the room.

“Do you think it was…?”

“I am not sure.” Thor turns back towards him, with a haunted look in his eyes and a half smile. “You were right. I wish desperately I’d learned to tell the difference. It is hard though. There are some dreams that I am certain they are vision of the future - and they do not come true. Others, it is only looking back that I recognize the prophecy for what it was. Foolish.”

“The future is never set in stone,” Loki says gently. “What did you dream of?”

Thor shakes his head. “It was murky, shadowed. I woke with the taste of ashes in my mouth.”

Loki comes to sit beside him, resting his head on Thor’s shoulder. “Perhaps it was just a nightmare. We certainly have enough of those.”

“Yes,” Thor says, but sounds uncertain. “A nightmare.”

“You are by far the worst witch in the Nine Realms.”

That gets a small chuckle out of Thor. “So you’ve said, brother. So you’ve said.” They do not sleep for the rest of the night, but instead watch the dawn rise over Wakanda.  


The final preparations take most of the morning, and anxiety is forcibly suppressed in the wake of busyness.

They all eat a final lunch together, and then gather in Jane’s lab. Loki pours out a glass bottle of specially prepared water into a basin.

“I’ll use this to make sure you actually arrive.” Loki holds up a pin and Thor allows him to prick his finger, letting a drop of blood fall into the water.

“I hope I do,” Thor says with some alarm.

“You will! I’m super confident in my calculations,” Jane says. She sounds nervously excited. “I’ve checked them a thousand times, like I am sure you’ll be fine. Pretty sure you’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, Jane. For all your work.” Thor hugs her, and it’s only a little awkward.

“Be careful,” She says.

“I will. Farewell again, Bruce.”

“See ya,” They clasp hands. “Hopefully under better circumstances.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for him,” Steve says, inclining his head in Loki’s direction.

“I don’t need looking out for,” Loki protests, but it even sounds hollow to his own ears. He half smiles.

“Thank you, Steve,” Thor says earnestly. “For all that you’ve done.”

Thor has already said goodbye to the others. He leaves Loki for last.

“Do not do anything stupid,” Loki scolds. “Especially if you think it is heroic.”

“You either.” Thor draws Loki into his arms. He cups the back of his head with a hand, and presses a kiss to his hair. “We will be together again soon. I swear it.” He pulls back, too soon for Loki’s liking. With a final kiss to his forehead, it is time to go.

“Okay, you’re for sure ready?” Jane asks.

Thor adjusts his cape. “I am ready.”

Jane checks the programming with a final glance, then shows Thor where to stand. She hits a button and the portal begins to form, small at first, but soon growing into a stable circle. Thor takes a deep breath and steps forward. In a swirl of electric light, mingled with magic, he disappears. The connection between them - eased apart in the past days, but not yet entirely gone - is cut off in an instant, as it had been when Thor had gone to New York to pick up Bruce. The sudden cold of the severed connection makes Loki gasp, waver. He has to grip the edge of the table for a moment to remain upright.

“Did he make it?” Jane asks, her voice edging on shrill with nerves. With a steadying breath, Loki gathers his magic and concentrates on the bowl of water. Thor’s image, landing neatly on the floor of Nidavellir, fills the surface. Even with the blood as anchor, he can only hold the images for a moment before he must release it. Before vision dissolves, he thinks he sees the edge of a blue cape fluttering into view.

“He made it,” He says, and Jane looks profoundly relieved. “He’s gone.”

“He’ll be back as soon as he can,” Bruce says softly.

“I know,” He snaps. Guilt fills in the space that momentary irritation left as it fled. “Sorry.”

Bruce just looks at him with understanding, and perhaps sympathy. “I know.”

Steve looks more determined than ever. “Okay. Time to get back to work.” He nods at Loki and leaves the room.

Jane begins to clear up her supplies and scattered notes.

“Now that that’s done, I can try to help you and Shuri with Vision, if you want. Not sure how much help I’ll be.”

“Honestly, I’m not sure how much help _I’m_ being,” Bruce replies. They chatter on about Shuri’s work reprogramming the synapses while Loki cleans up the basin of water. He wonders what to do now. He feels half a burden, unsure of his place in the preparation for Thanos’s arrival. There is not much else he can do but wait for the next move. He considers going to T’Challa, to talk to him of magical defenses that might be deployed, especially if Ebony Maw becomes involved. Or perhaps he could check up on the mortal sorcerer, make sure he is truly guarding the Time Stone properly.

All possibilities. For now, he will try his luck staying in Wakanda, cast his lot with T’Challa and Steve Rogers, and the rest will have to wait.  


In the other room, Shuri frowns at her computer.

“I’ve got a news alert,” She says. T’Challa bends over her shoulder to look at the image, Sam coming to her other side.

“What the hell…”

“Uh, hey guys, I think you need to see this,’ Sam says as Shuri turns the sound up on her computer monitor.

“I’ll go get Loki,” Wanda rushes off. Steve isn’t listening. Instead, his gaze is fixed on an object. That old cell phone, the beat up flip phone only one person on the entire planet had the number for, is vibrating on the counter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! That's the end! You can see why I said it was not 'quite' a fix-it right? Thanos is coming and things aren't going to be good and I left you on a bit of a cliffhanger. (But trust me, I had a worse idea for a cliffhanger, and spared y'all.) This fic was like 80% emotional conversations while danger brewed in the background. Ugh. I had so much fun writing it. 
> 
> I'm hard at work on the concluding story, and I have two ideas for sequels beyond that! So I'm not remotely done. Though, by 'I'm hard at work on the next' is...I have the prologue and the epilogue written and I'm making dinosaur noises at the middle. So it might be a while, especially because I want to make sure I do it right. I also have a couple things that are super close to being complete and want to finish those up before really tackling this sequel. Follow me on [tumblr (bereft-of-frogs)](https://bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com/) for writing progress, whining about _Endgame_ (don't worry, I heavily tag both 'endgame spoilers' and 'endgame negativity' should you want to avoid either), and various other shenanigans. 
> 
> Thank you all so, so much for reading. When I started posting 'pain, and other human sensations' in November I truly had no idea how big this would get and how much creative energy would grow out of posting this series. I feel so energetic about fandom and writing in general, more so than I have in _years_ and it's all down to you! As always, comments are more than appreciated. <3


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